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CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

Second  Series 


Copyright  in  the  United  States,  1919,  by 
FRANK    HARRIS 


CONTEMPORARY 
PORTRAITS 


Second  Series 


By 

FRANK  HARRIS 


« 


Published  by  the  Author 
57  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

George  Bernard  Shaw , 1 

Rudyard  Kipling   45 

Ernest  Dowson   64 

Theodore  Dreiser  81 

George  Moore   107 

Lord  Dunsany  and  Sidney  Sinie 141 

James  Thomson 158 

Lionel  Johnson  and  Hubert  Crackanthorpe  179 

Pierre  Loti 192 

Walter  Pater  203 

Herbert  Spencer 227 

The  Right  Hon.  Arthur  J.  Balfour 245 

The  Right  Hon.  David  Lloyd  George. ...  261 

Viscount  Grey 282 

Georges  Clemenceau   297 

Shaw's  Portrait  by  Shaw,  or 

How  Frank  Ought  to  Have  Done  It 312 


FOREWORD  TO  THE  SECOND 


SERIES  OF  PORTRAITS 

ITERATURE  learns  so  unwillingly 
from  life  that  it  is  not  surprising  that 
it  should  learn  so  reluctantly  from 
the  methods  of  science  and  yet  it 
might  learn  a  good  deal.  For  exam- 
ple, a  biologist  finds  a  new  sort  of  bird,  let  us 
say,  and  sits  down  to  describe  it. 

He  is  far  more  than  impartial;  he  knows  that 
his  description  must  be  so  perfectly  accurate  that 
another  biologist  ten  thousand  miles  away  should 
be  able  to  classify  the  bird  from  it  as  well  as  if 
he  had  the  bird  before  him. 

How  many  literary  critics  are  there  who  reach 
such  high  detachment  and  show  such  scrupulous 
care? 

The  biologist  knows,  too,  that  length  of 
feather  or  peculiarity  of  coloring  is  not  so  im- 
portant as  structural  differences  in  the  skeleton, 
or  such  organic  modifications  as  will  affect  the 
creature's  chances  of  surviving  and  propagating 

V 


vi  FOREWORD 

his  kind.  Accordingly  he  is  on  the  lookout  for 
peculiarities  in  proportion  to  their  vital  impor- 
tance to  the  race  or  species. 

But  what  literary  critic  uses  such  an  enduring 
standard  of  values? 

And  when  the  man  of  science  approaches  the 
chief  part  of  his  task  he  is  even  more  careful : 
he  must  classify  the  specimen,  decide  what  spe- 
cies it  belongs  to,  and  whether  it  is  more  nearly 
akin  to  this  family  or  to  that.  A  mistake  here 
would  expose  him  to  the  derision  of  every  biolo- 
gist in  the  world,  whereas  if  he  performs  his 
work  beyond  possibility  of  fault-finding  he  will 
only  have  done  what  is  expected  of  every  compe- 
tent craftsman. 

When  will  literary  criticism  even  seek  to 
attain  such  excellence? 

You  have  a  Sainte  Beuve  comparing  Flaubert 
with  Madame  Sand  and  Eugene  Sue,  regretting 
that  the  author  of  "Salambo"  does  not  write  so 
well  as  the  author  of  "Mauprat,"  and  that  the 
creator  of  "Madame  Bovary"  has  not  such  fer- 
tility of  imagination  as  the  author  of  "The 
Wandering  Jew" ! 

Or  your  Sainte  Beuve  will  tell  you  that  Bal- 
zac's fame  will  be  drowned  in  the  sea  of  his 
impurities,  that  the  most  extraordinary  specimen 


FOREWORD  vii 

of  man  it  was  ever  the  good  fortune  of  a  French- 
man to  meet  was  so  little  out  of  the  common 
that  he  was  fated  soon  to  be  forgotten. 

In  much  the  same  way  your  Matthew  Arnold 
will  call  Byron  a  great  poet  and  put  him  far 
above  Heine  and  will  condemn  Keats  for  writ- 
ing sensual  letters  to  his  love  and  for  consequent 
"ill-breeding,"  apparently  without  even  a  suspi- 
cion that  Keats  is  a  greater  poet  than  Milton  and 
Heine  incomparably  the  first  of  all  the  moderns. 
Yet  Arnold  as  a  poet  should  have  known  that 
the  "Hyperion"  is  dowered  with  a  richness  of 
rhythm  and  a  magnificence  of  music  to  which 
Paradise  Lost  can  lay  no  claim;  while  Heine's 
position  is  beyond  dispute. 

But  for  brainless  prejudice  and  shameful 
blundering  that  would  ruin  the  reputation  of 
any  first  year's  student  in  biology,  these  so-called 
masters  of  literary  criticism  are  not  even  blamed. 
And  accordingly  we  find  a  Meredith  at  seventy 
declaring  that  his  works  have  never  been  criti- 
cised, that  no  one  in  England  has  even  tried  to 
describe  his  productions  fairly,  much  less 
classify  him  correctly. 

While  attempting  to  rival  scientific  exactitude 
and  detached  impartiality  the  literary  critic  has 


viii  FOREWORD 

still  a  further  height  to  climb.  His  description 
may  be  exact,  his  classification  fairly  correct, 
yet  we  shall  not  be  satisfied  unless  he  reveals  to 
us  the  ever-changing  soul  of  his  subject  and  its 
possibilities  of  growth.  In  this  way  art  asserts 
its  superiority  to  science. 

When  this  ultimate  domain  is  reached  a  new 
question  imposes  itself.  The  portrait  painter  is 
always  drawn  by  two  divergent  forces;  he  must 
catch  the  likeness  of  his  sitter  and  yet  make  his 
portrait  a  work  of  art. 

This  world-old  dispute  in  portraiture  between 
realism  and  art  was  settled  for  the  artist  by 
Michelangelo.  Some  one  who  watched  him 
working  on  his  great  statue  of  Lorenzo  dei 
Medici  kept  on  objecting  that  it  was  not  like 
Lorenzo,  that  he  had  known  that  great  man  for 
years,  and  that  he  would  not  have  recognized 
him  from  the  sculptor's  presentment. 

At  length  Michelangelo  turned  on  his  buzzing 
critic:  "Who  will  care  whether  it's  like  him  or 
not  a  thousand  years  hence?" 

In  other  words,  the  obligation  on  the  artist  is 
to  "produce  a  great  work  of  art,"  and  there  is 
no  other. 

At  the  same  time,  the  great  portaits  of  the 
world  such  as  the  picture  of  Charles  V.  on  horse- 


FOREWORD  ix 

back  by  Titian  and  the  Meniilas  of  Velasquez 
and  the  Syndics  of  Rembrandt  manage  to  recon- 
cile to  some  extent  both  requirements. 

Likeness  is  caught  most  easily  by  exaggeration 
of  characteristic  features;  but  such  exaggeration 
is  apt  to  offend  the  modesty  of  truth  and  fall  into 
caricature;  whereas  the  work  of  art  is  always 
founded  on  truth  as  a  beautiful  figure  demands  a 
perfect  skeleton,  and  any  heightening  even  of  the 
truth  must  have  beauty  or  some  strange  and  pro- 
found significance  as  justification.  How  far 
then  is  exaggeration  or  modification  of  the  fact 
allowed?  I  solved  the  riddle  rather  loosely  in 
my  own  way.  When  my  subject  is  really  a  great 
man,  a  choice  and  master-spirit,  I  try  to  depict 
him  in  his  habit  as  he  lived  with  absolute  fidelity 
to  fact.  In  the  case  of  Carlyle  and  Browning, 
Meredith,  Burton  and  Davidson  in  my  first  vol- 
ume of  portraits,  just  as  in  the  case  of  Shaw  and 
Thomson  and  Walt  Whitman  in  this  volume,  I 
have  taken  no  liberties  wittingly  with  the  fact; 
the  real  is  good  enough  for  me  when  it  is  halo- 
crowned  ;  but  when  I  am  dealing  with  smaller 
men  whose  growth  has  been  dwarfed  or  warped 
or  thwarted  I  permit  myself  a  certain  latitude  of 
interpretation,  or  even  of  artistic  presentment. 
Browning's  Rabbi  was  right: 


FOREWORD 

"All  I  could  never  be, 
All  men  ignored  in  me, 
This  was  I  worth  to  God  whose  wheel  the  pitcher  shaped." 

The  artist  must  divine  the  secret  nature  and 
even  the  unconscious  potentialities  of  his  subject 
and  bring  them  to  expression  or  his  work  will 
not  endure,  and  it  is  love  alone  that  divines,  love 
alone  to  which  all  possibilities  are  actualities 
and  faults  and  vices  merely  shadows  which  out- 
line and  lift  into  relief  the  noble  qualities. 

It  is  By  love  that  the  artist  reaches  higher  than 
the  impartiality  of  the  man  of  science  and  discov- 
ers the  secrets  of  the  spirit;  love  is  the  only  key 
to  personality  and  is  as  necessary  to  the  artist  as 
his  breath.  It  is  indeed  the  breath  of  the  soul, 
the  emanation  which  clothes  Truth  with  the 
magical  vestment  of  Beauty. 


•** 


George  Bernard  Shaw 


CONTEMPORARY  PORTRAITS 

George  Bernard  Shaw 

ON  QUIXOTE  lived  in  an  imag- 
inary past;  he  cherished  the  beliefs 
and  tried  to  realize  the  ideal,  of  an 
earlier  age.  Our  modern  Don 
Quixotes  all  live  in  the  future  and 
hug  a  belief  of  their  own  making,  an  ideal  cor- 
responding to  their  own  personality. 

Both  the  lovers  of  the  past  and  the  future, 
however,  start  by  despising  the  present;  they  are 
profoundly  dissatisfied  with  what  is  and  in  love 
with  what  has  been  or  may  be.  The  main 
difference  between  the  rueful  Knight  and  Ba- 
zarof  is  that  the  Don  turns  his  back  on  the  actual 
whereas  the  modern  thinker  seeks  to  end  or 
mend  existing  conditions,  and  thus  found  a  new 
civilization,  the  Kingdom  of  Man  upon  Earth. 
Bernard  Shaw  is  the  best  specimen  of  Bazarof 
that  our  time  has  seen;  he  is  at  once  a  greater 
force  and  more  effective  than  his  Russian  pro- 
totype, for  he  attacks  the  faults  of  the  established 

1 


order  with  humor,  a  weapon  of  divine  temper 
and  almost  irresistibly  effective. 

But  Shaw  is  more  than  an  iconoclast. 
His  work  as  a  dramatist  is  at  least  as  im- 
•rtant  as  his  critical  energy.    In  this  respect  I 
vs  think  of  him  as  a  British  Moliere  gifted 
fine  a  wit  as  the  great  Frenchman  and 
s  wide  a  reach  of  thought.     It  is  as  a 
oliere,   and  even  something  higher, 
to  present  him.     More  than  once 
ed  true  prophet  and  guide  and 
selfish  policies  and  hypocrisies 
high  disregard  of  personal 
he  has  not  been  imprisoned 
ecuted  is  due  to  the  fact 
in  many  things  and  that 
a  from  being  taken  too 
s  to  be  taken  seriously, 
igh  appreciation  of 
my  readers  to  re- 
ion  of  him. 
n  I  bought  The 
get  the  ablest 
leir  opinions 

d  heard  of 

1  because 

e  given 

"V  had 

nard 


Shaw  profited  by  the  coincidence.  He  made 
himself  known  as  a  journalist  by  his  papers  on 
music  in  The  Star,  a  cheap  Radical  evening 
paper,  and  preached  socialism  to  boot  wherever 
he  could  get  a  hearing. 

In  1892  he  began  writing  for  The  World, 
a  paper  of  some  importance  so  long  as  its  founder 
and  editor,  Edmund  Yates,  was  alive.  But 
Yates  died  six  months  or  so  before  I  bought  The 
Saturday  Review,  and  I  knew  that  Shaw  would 
resent  the  change.  The  idea  of  connecting 
Shaw  the  Socialist  orator  with  the  high  Tory 
Saturday  Review  pleased  me;  the  very  incon- 
gruity tempted  and  his  ability  was  beyond 
question.  Now  and  again  1  had  read  his  weekly 
articles  on  music  and  while  admiring  the  keen 
insight  of  them  and  the  satiric  light  he  threw 
on  pompous  pretences  and  unrealities,  I  noticed 
that  he  had  begun  to  repeat  himself,  as  if  he 
had  said  all  he  had  to  say  on  that  theme. 

What  should  I  ask  him  to  write  about? 
What  was  his  true  vein?  He  had  as  much 
humor  as  Wilde — the  name  at  once  crystalized 
my  feeling — that  was  what  Shaw  should  do,  I 
said  to  myself,  write  on  the  theatre;  in  essence 
his  talent,  like  Wilde's,  was  theatrical,  almost  to 
caricature,  certain,  therefore,  to  carry  across  the 
footlights  and  have  an  immediate  eflfect. 

I  wrote  to  him  at  once,  telling  him  my  opinion 
of  his  true  talent  and  asking  him  to  write  a 

3 


weekly  article  for  The  Saturday  Review. 

He  answered  immediately ;  a  letter  somewhat 
after  this  fashion ; 

"How  the  Dickens  you  knew  that  my  thoughts 
had  been  turning  to  the  theater  of  late  and  that 
Fd  willingly  occupy  myself  with  it  exclusively 
for  some  time  to  come,  I  can't  imagine.  But 
you've  hit  the  clout,  as  the  Elizabethans  used  to 
say,  and,  if  you  can  afford  to  pay  me  regularly, 
I'm  your  man  so  long  as  the  job  suits  me  and 
I  suit  the  job.    What  can  you  afford  to  give?" 

My  answer  was  equally  prompt  and  to  the 
point: 

"I  can  afford  to  give  you  so  much  a  week, 
more,  I  believe,  than  you  are  now  getting.  If 
that  appeals  to  you,  start  in  at  once;  bring  mc 
your  first  article  by  next  Wednesday  and  we'll 
have  a  final  pow-wow." 

On  the  Wednesday  Shaw  turned  up  with  the 
article,  and  I  had  a  good  look  at  him  and  a  long 
talk  with  him.  Shaw  at  this  time  was  nearing 
forty;  very  tall,  over  six  feet  in  height  and  thin 
to  angularity;  a  long  bony  face,  corresponding, 
I  thought,  to  a  tendency  to  get  to  bedrock  every- 
where; rufous  fair  hair  and  long,  untrimmed 
reddish  beard;  gray-blue  English  eyes  with 
straight  eyebrows  tending  a  little  upwards  from 
the  nose  and  thus  adding  a  touch  of  Mephisto- 
phelian  sarcasm  to  the  alert,  keen  expression. 
He  was   dressed   carelessly  in   tweeds  with  a 

4 


Jaeger  flannel  shirt  and  negligent  tie;  contempt 
of  frills  written  all  over  him;  his  hands  clean 
and  well-kept,  but  not  manicured.  His  com- 
plexion, singularly  fair  even  for  a  man  with 
reddish  hair,  seemed  too  bloodless  to  me,  re- 
minded me  of  his  vegetarianism  which  had  puz- 
zled me  more  than  a  little  for  some  time.  His 
entrance  into  the  room,  his  abrupt  movements — 
as  jerky  as  the  ever-changing  mind — his  perfect 
unconstraint — all  showed  an  able  man,  very 
conscious  of  his  ability,  very  direct,  very  sin- 
cere, sharply  decisive. 

"I  liked  your  letter,"  Shaw  began,  "as  I  told 
you;  the  price,  too,  suits  me  for  the  moment; 
but — you  won't  alter  my  articles,  will  you?" 

"Not  a  word,"  I  said.  "If  I  should  want  any- 
thing changed,  which  is  most  unlikely,  I'd  send 
you  a  proof  and  ask  you  to  alter  it;  but  that  is 
not  going  to  occur  often.  I  like  original  opinions 
even  though  I  don't  agree  with  them." 

After  some  further  talk,  he  said : 

"Very  well  then.  If  the  money  appears  regu- 
larly you  can  count  on  me  for  a  weekly  outpour- 
ing.   You  don't  limit  me  in  any  way?" 

"Not  in  any  way,"  I  answered. 

"Well,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  new  Saturday 
Review  should  make  a  stir." 

"After  we're  all  dead,  not  much  before,  but 
that  doesn't  matter,"  I  replied.  "I've  asked  all 
the  reviewers  only  to  review  those  books  they 

5 


admire  and  can  praise:  starfinders  they  should 
be,  not  fault-finders." 

"What'll  the  master  of  'flouts  and  jeers' 
think?"  asked  Shaw.  (Lord  Salisbury,  the 
bitter-tongued  Prime  Minister,  had  been  a  con- 
stant contributor  to  The  Saturday  Review 
twenty  years  before,  and  was  understood  still  to 
take  an  interest  in  his  old  journal.) 

"I  don't  know  and  I  don't  care,"  I  replied; 
and  our  talk  came  to  an  end. 

Shaw  was  a  most  admirable  contributor, 
always  punctual  unless  there  was  some  good 
reason  for  being  late;  always  scrupulous,  cor- 
recting his  proofs  heavily,  with  rare  conscien- 
tiousness, and  always  doing  his  very  best. 

I  soon  realized  that  the  drama  of  the  day  had 
never  been  so  pungently  criticized;  I  began  to 
compare  Shaw's  articles  with  the  Dramaturgie 
of  Lessing,  and  it  was  Shaw  who  gained  by  the 
comparison. 

His  critical  writing  was  exactly  like  his  speak- 
ing and  indeed  like  his  creative  dramatic  work; 
very  simple,  direct  and  lucid,  clarity  and  sin- 
cerity his  characteristics.  No  pose,  no  trace  of 
affectation ;  a  man  of  one  piece,  out  to  convince 
not  to  persuade;  a  bare  logical  argument  lit  up 
by  gleams  of  sardonic  humor;  humor  of  the  head 
as  a  rule  and  not  of  the  heart.  His  writing 
seemed  artless,  but  there  is  a  good  deal  of  art 
in  his  plays  and  art  too,  can  be  discovered  both 

6 


in  his  speaking  and  in  his  critical  work,  but 
whether  there  is  enough  art  to  serve  as  a  pro- 
phylactic against  time,  remains  to  be  seen. 

His  seriousness,  sincerity  and  brains  soon 
brought  the  actor-managers  out  in  arms  against 
him.  Naturally  they  did  not  condemn  his  writ- 
ing, but  his  dress  and  behaviour.  Two  or  three 
of  them  told  me  at  various  times  that  Shaw  was 
impossible. 

**He  often  comes  to  the  theatre  in  ordinary 
dress,"  said  one,  ''and  looks  awful." 

**You  ought  to  thank  your  stars  that  he  goes 
to  your  theatre  at  all,"  I  replied.  "I  certainly 
shall  not  instruct  him  how  to  clothe  himself." 

"What  I  object  to,"  said  another,  "is  that  he 
laughs  in  the  wrong  place.  It  is  dreadful  when 
a  favorite  actor  is  saying  something  very  pathetic 
or  sentimental  to  see  a  great  figure  in  gray 
stretch  himself  out  in  the  front  stalls  and  roar 
with  laughter." 

"I  know,"  I  replied  grinning,  "and  the  worst 
of  it  is  that  all  the  world  laughs  with  Shaw 
when  he  shows  it  the  unconscious  humor  of  your 
performance." 

An  amusing  incident  closed  this  controversy. 
One  night  a  manager  told  Shaw  he  could  not 
go  into  the  stalls  in  that  dress.  Shaw  imme- 
diately began  to  take  off  his  coat. 

"No,  no,"  cried  the  actor-manager;  "I  mean 
you  must  dress  like  other  people." 

7 


Shaw  glanced  at  the  rows  of  half-dressed 
women:  "I'm  not  going  to  take  off  my  shirt," 
he  exclaimed,  "in  order  to  be  like  your  clients," 
and  forthwith  left  the  house. 

The  dispute  had  one  good  result.  Shaw 
asked  me  to  buy  his  tickets.  "I  hate  the  whole 
practice  of  complimentary  tickets,"  he  said.  "It 
is  intended  to  bind  one  to  praise  and  I  resent  the 
implied  obligation." 

Of  course,  I  did  as  he  wished  and  there  the 
trouble  ended. 

At  rare  intervals  I  had  to  tell  Shaw  his  article 
was  too  long  and  beg  him  to  shorten  it.  For 
months  together  I  had  nothing  to  do  except  con- 
gratulate myself  on  having  got  him  as  a  con- 
tributor; though  at  first  he  was  strenuously 
objected  to  by  many  of  my  readers  who  wrote 
begging  me  to  cancel  their  subscriptions  or  at 
least  to  cease  from  befouling  their  houses  with 
"Shaw's  socialistic  rant  and  theatric  twaddle." 

An  incident  or  two  in  the  four  years'  com- 
panionship may  be  cited,  for  they  show,  I  think, 
the  real  Shaw.  William  Morris,  the  poet  and 
decorator-craftsman,  died  suddenly.  Shaw 
called  just  to  tell  me  he'd  like  to  write  a  special 
article  on  Morris,  as  a  socialist  and  prose-writer 
and  speaker.  I  said  I'd  be  delighted,  tor  Arthur 
Symons  was  going  to  write  on  his  poetry  and 
Cunninghame  Graham  on  his  funeral.  I  hoped 
to  have  three  good  articles.    When  they  arrived. 

8 


I  found  that  Symons  was  very  good  indeed  and 
so  was  Shaw;  but  Cunninghame  Graham  had 
written  a  little  masterpiece,  a  gem  of  restrained 
yet  passionate  feeling:  absolute  realistic  descrip- 
tion lifted  to  poetry  by  profound  emotion. 

Shaw  came  blown  in  on  the  Monday  full  of 
unaffected  admiration. 

"What  a  story  that  was  of  Graham's  I"  he 
cried,  "a  great  writer,  isn't  he?" 

I  nodded:  "An  amateur  of  genius:  it's  a  pity 
he  hasn't  to  earn  his  living  by  his  pen." 

"A  good  thing  for  us,"  cried  Shaw,  "he'd  wipe 
the  floor  with  us  all  if  he  often  wrote  like  that." 

I  only  relate  the  happening  to  show  Shaw's 
unaffected  sincerity  and  outspoken  admiration  of 
good  work  in  another  man. 

I  came  to  regard  him  as  a  realist  by  nature, 
who,  living  in  the  modern  realistic  current,  was 
resolved  to  be  taken  simply  for  what  he  was  and 
what  he  could  do,  and  equally  resolved  to  judge 
all  other  men  and  women  by  the  same  relentless 
positive  standard.  This  love  of  truth  for  its 
own  sake,  truth  beyond  vanity  or  self-praise,  is 
a  product  of  the  modern  scientific  spirit  and 
appears  to  me  to  embody  one  of  the  loftiest  ideals 
yet  recorded  among  men. 

It  marks,  indeed,  the  coming  of  age  of  the 
race  and  is  a  sign  that  we  have  done  with  child- 
ish make-believes.  From  this  time  on  we  shall 
turn  our  daily  job  into  the  great  adventure  and 

9 


make  of  its  perfecting  our  life's  romance. 
Shaw's  realism,  his  insistence  on  recognizing 
only  real  values  was  so  intense  that  it  called 
forth  one  of  Oscar  Wilde's  finest  epigrams : 

"Shaw,"  he  said,  ''hasn't  an  enemy  in  the 
world  and  none  of  his  friends  like  him." 

One  can  hardly  help  asking:  how  did  Shaw 
grow  to  this  height  so  early? 

It  was  always  evident  to  me  that  by  some 
happy  fortune  Shaw  had  escaped  the  English 
public  school  and  its  maiming  deforming  influ- 
ence. His  view  of  life  and  men  and  women  was 
too  true,  too  unconventional,  too  bold,  ever  to 
have  come  into  contact  even  with  the  poisonous 
atmosphere  of  Eton  or  Harrow  or  the  like. 
Where  had  he  been  educated?  was  a  question 
always  on  the  tip  of  my  tongue. 

"I  am  an  educated  man,"  he  replied,  "because 
I  escaped  from  school  at  fourteen,  and  before 
that  was  only  a  day-boy  who  never  wasted  the 
free  half  of  my  life  in  learning  lessons  or  read- 
ing schoolbooks." 

A  little  later  he  wrote  to  me  with  the  same 
understanding: 

"I  come  of  a  Protestant  family  ot  true-blue 
garrison  snobs,  but  before  I  was  ten  years  of  age 
I  got  into  an  atmosphere  of  freedom  of  thought, 
of  anarchic  revolt  against  conventional  assump- 
tions of  all  kinds,  utterly  incompatible  with  the 
generalized    concept    of    an    Irish    Protestant 

10 


family.  I  was  forbidden  nothing  and  spared 
nothing.  My  maternal  uncle,  clever  and  literate, 
was  an  abyss  of  blasphemy  and  obscenity. 

"My  mother,  brought  up  with  merciless  strict- 
ness by  a  rich  hunchbacked  aunt  to  be  a  perfect 
lady,  and  disinherited  furiously  by  her  for  being 
(consequently)  ignorant  enough  of  the  world  to 
marry  my  father,  had  such  a  horror  of  her  own 
training  that  she  left  her  children  without  any 
training  at  all. 

"My  humorous  father,  a  sort  of  mute  inglori- 
ous Charles  Lamb,  who  disgusted  my  mother  by 
his  joyless  furtive  drinking  and  his  poverty  and 
general  failure,  could  no  more  control  me  than 
he  could  avoid  being  thrust  into  the  background 
by  an  energetic  man  of  genius  (an  orchestral 
conductor  and  teacher  of  singing)  into  whose 
public  work  my  mother  threw  herself  when  he 
taught  her  to  sing,  and  who  made  life  possible 
for  her  by  coming  to  live  with  us.  This  man's 
hand  was  against  every  man,  and  every  man's 
hand  against  him.  He  had  his  own  method 
of  singing  and  everyone  else's  was  murder- 
ously wrong.  He  would  not  hear  of  doctors; 
when  my  mother  had  a  dangerous  illness  he 
took  the  case  in  hand,  and  when  he  at  last 
allowed  my  father  to  call  in  an  eminent 
physician,  the  e.  p.  looked  at  my  mother 
and  said:  'My  work  has  already  been  done.' 
He  was  equally  contemptuous  of  the  church, 

11 


though  he  could  conduct  Beethoven's  Mass  in  C. 
better  than  his  pious  rivals.  He  had  no  time  to 
read  anything,  and  took  Tyndall  on  Sound  to 
bed  with  him  every  night  for  years  (he  slept 
badly)  without  ever  getting  to  the  end  of  it. 
There  was  no  sex  in  the  atmosphere ;  it  was  never 
discussed  or  even  thought  about  as  far  as  I  could 
see;  you  had  only  to  hear  my  mother  sing 
Mendelsohn's  "Hear  My  Prayer,"  or  even  listen 
to  one  note  of  her  voice  to  understand  that  she 
might  have  been  the  centre  of  a  menage  a  mille 
et  trois  without  an  atom  of  scandal  sticking  to 
her  no  matter  how  hard  it  was  thrown.  You 
will  see  that  my  circumstances  were  quite  un- 
usual and  that  nobody  could  possibly  deduce 
them  from  general  data." 

This  bringing  up  under  a  man  of  genius  ex- 
plains Shaw's  unhindered,  natural  growth  and 
he  went  on  to  indicate  how  his  musical  training 
in  youth  helped  his  development: 

"The  great  difficulty  of  dealing  with  my 
education  lies  in  the  fact  that  my  culture  was 
so  largely  musical.  It  will  be  admitted  that  no 
one  without  as  much  familiarity  with  the  mas- 
terpieces of  music  as  with  those  of  literature 
could  write  adequately  about  Wagner.  But  the 
same  thing  is  true  of  me.  You  cannot  account 
for  me  by  saying  that  I  was  steeped  in  Dickens, 
or  even  later  in  Moliere.  I  was  steeped  in 
Mozart,  too;  it  was  from  him  that  I  learned 

12 


how  art  work  could  reach  the  highest  degree  of 
strength,  refinement,  beauty  and  seriousness 
without  being  heavy  and  portentous.  Shelley 
made  a  great  impression  on  me;  I  read  him 
from  beginning  to  end,  prose  and  verse,  and 
held  him  quite  sacred  in  my  adolescence.  But 
Beethoven  and  early  Wagner  were  at  work 
alongside  him. 

"Then  there  was  science  in  which  I  have  never 
lost  my  interest.  I  even  claim  to  have  made 
certain  little  contributions  to  the  theory  of  Crea- 
tive Evolution  (which  is  my  creed:  you  can 
compare  the  third  Act  of  Man  and  Superman 
with  Bergson's  treatise). 

"Socialism  sent  me  to  economics,  which  I 
worked  at  for  four  years  until  I  mastered  it 
completely,  only  to  find,  of  course,  that  none  of 
the  other  socialists  had  taken  that  trouble.  I 
do  not  read  any  foreign  language  easily  without 
the  dictionary  except  French.  I  have  a  sort  of 
acquaintance  with  Italian,  mostly  operatic;  and 
you  could  not  put  a  German  document  into  my 
hands  without  some  risk  of  my  being  able  to 
understand  it;  but  what  you  call  knowing  a  lan- 
guage; that  is,  something  more  than  being  able 
to  ask  the  way  to  the  Bahnhof  or  the  Duomo, 
puts  me  out  of  court  as  a  linguist.  As  to  Latin 
on  which  all  my  schooling  was  supposed  to  be 
spent,  I  cannot  read  an  epitaph  or  a  tag  from 
Horace  without  stumbling.    Naturally  I  make 

13 


use  of  translations  and  musical  settings.  I  know 
Faust  and  the  Niblung's  Ring  as  well  as  the 
Germans  know  Shakespeare.  I  am  very  un- 
teachable  and  could  not  pass  the  fourth  standard 
examination  in  an  elementary  school — not  that 
anybody  else  could;  but  still  you  know  what  I 
mean." 

Shaw's  explanation  is  fairly  complete;  only 
a  man  of  genius  could  see  himself  from  the  out- 
side with  this  impartiality.  Yet  he  leaves  out  of 
the  account  the  influence  exercised  on  him,  per- 
haps unconsciously,  by  the  Irish  atmosphere  so 
to  speak,  during  his  formative  years.  The  ordi- 
nary Celtic  view  of  England  constitutes  no 
small  part  of  Shaw's  originality;  for  the  habit 
of  judging  another  people  from  the  outside,  so 
to  speak,  while  living  amongst  them,  is  a  spirit- 
ual gymnastic,  a  mental  training  of  the  highest 
value. 

Shaw  himself  has  told  how  he  became  inter- 
ested in  Shakespeare  through  meeting  Thomas 
Tyler  and  hearing  his  explanation  of  the  story 
told  in  the  Sonnets,  and  this  study,  no  doubt, 
helped  him  in  his  evolution  from  Bazarof  to 
Moliere  and  incidentally  led  to  my  first  differ- 
ence with  him.  I  must  touch  on  this  now  for 
nowhere,  save  perhaps  in  love,  and  but  little  is 
known  even  by  his  intimates  of  Shaw's  amorous 
experiences,  does  a  man  reveal  his  true  nature 
more  ingeniously  than  in  a  quarrel  or  dispute. 

14 


One  day  in  The  Saturday  Review  office  I  got 
a  letter  from  a  friend  of  very  considerable  abil- 
ity, begging  me  not  to  let  Shaw  go  on  "writing 
drivel  about  Shakespeare;  on  his  own  job  he's 
good,  but  why  let  him  talk  rot?"  I  had  noticed 
Shaw's  divagations;  but  he  used  Shakespeare 
like  the  British  use  the  ten  commandments  as  a 
shillelagh,  and  as  Shaw  took  the  great  drama- 
tist generally  to  point  unconventional  morals,  I 
didn't  wish  to  restrain  him.  But  one  day  his 
weekly  paper  was  chiefly  about  Shakespeare, 
and  he  fell  into  two  or  three  of  the  gross  common 
blunders  on  the  subject :  notably,  in  one  passage, 
he  assumed  that  Shakespeare  had  been  a  good 
husband — the  usual  English  misconception. 

I  wrote  to  him  at  once: 

''You  are  writing  so  brilliantly  on  the  weekly 
theater-happenings,  why  on  earth  drag  in  Shake- 
speare always  like  King  Charles's  head,  as  you 
know  nothing  about  him."  I  got  an  answer  by 
return: 

"What  in  thunder  do  you  mean  by  saying  I 
know  nothing  of  Shakespeare?  I  know  more 
about  the  immortal  Will  than  any  living  man," 
and  so  forth  and  so  on. 

T   replied: 

"Come  to  lunch  one  day  at  the  Cafe  Royal 
and  I'll  give  you  the  weeds  and  the  water  your 
soul  desires  and  prove  into  the  bargain  that  you 
know  nothing  whatever  about  Shakespeare." 

15 


When  we  had  ordered  our  lunch  Shaw  began : 

"Who's  going  to  be  the  judge  between  us, 
Frank  Harris,  on  this  Shakespeare  matter?" 

"You,  Shaw,  only  you,"  I  replied,  "I  am  to 
convince  you  of  your  complete  and  incredible 
ignorance." 

He  snorted:  "Then  you  have  your  work  cut 
out;  we  can't  sleep  here,  can  we?" 

"The  time  it  will  take,"  I  retorted,  "depends 
on  your  intelligence — that's  what  I'm  reckoning 


on." 


"Humph!"  he  grunted  disdainfully.  We  had 
our  meal  and  then  went  at  it  hammer  and  tongs. 

"You  believe,"  I  began,  "that  because  Shake- 
speare left  Stratford  after  being  married  a 
couple  of  years  and  did  not  return  for  eleven 
years,  he  loved  his  wife?" 

"No,  no,"  replied  Shaw,  "I  said  in  my  article 
that  in  his  will  he  left  his  wife  'the  second-best 
bed'  as  a  pledge  of  his  affection.  I  remember 
reading  once  something  that  convinced  me  of 
this ;  I  don't  recall  the  argument  now ;  but  at  the 
time  it  convinced  me  and  I  can  look  it  up  for 
you  if  you  like." 

"You  needn't,"  I  replied,  "I'll  give  it  you; 
it's  probably  the  old  professorial  explanation: 
the  best  bed  in  those  days  was  in  the  guest  room; 
therefore  the  second-best  bed  was  the  one  Shake- 
speare slept  in  with  his  wife." 

16 


"That's  it,"  cried  Shaw,  "that's  it,  and  it  is 
convincing.    How  do  you  meet  it?" 

"Aren't  you  ashamed  of  yourself?"  I  replied. 
"Here's  Shakespeare,  the  most  articulate  crea- 
ture that  ever  lived,  the  greatest  lord  of  language 
in  recorded  time,  unable  in  his  will  to  express 
a  passionate  emotion  so  as  to  be  understood. 
Why,  had  he  even  written  'our  bed,  dear,'  as  the 
common  grocer  would  have  done,  we'd  all  have 
known  what  he  meant.  Shakespeare  could  never 
write  'the  second-best  bed'  without  realizing  the 
sneer  in  the  words  and  intending  us  to  realize  it 
as  well.     Besides " 

"Good  God,"  interrupted  Shaw,  throwing  up 
his  hand  to  his  forehead  impatiently,  "of  course 
not;  how  stupid  of  me!  Confound  the  mandar- 
ins and  their  idiot  explanations!" — and  after  a 
pause:  "I'll  give  you  the  second-best  bed;  I'm 
prepared  to  believe  that  Shakespeare  did  not 
love  his  wife.  Go  ahead  with  your  other  proofs 
of  my  ignorance." 

At  five  that  afternoon  we  left  the  table,  Shaw 
declaring  he  would  never  write  again  about 
Shakespeare  if  I'd  write  about  him. 

On  that,  I  began  my  articles  on  Shakespeare, 
which  afterwards  grew  into  books;  but  Shaw 
has  not  kept  his  vow.  He  has  written  again  and 
again  on  the  subject  and  always  with  a  bias, 
being  more  minded  to  realize  Shaw  than  Shake- 
speare. But  ever  since  that  talk  he  has  shown 
cordial  appreciation  of  my  work  on  the  subjtct. 

17 


By  dwelling  on  this  Shakespeare  difiference  I 
merely  wish  to  show  that  Shaw,  like  most  very 
able  men,  was  loath  to  admit  that  after  he  had 
studied  a  subject  he  had  by  no  means  exhausted 
it.  (Some  people  seem  to  think  that  by  telling 
this  story  I  am  trying  to  show  my  superiority 
over  Shaw.  The  idea  is  absurd.  Mere  knowl- 
edge gives  no  superiority.  Shaw  would  have  had 
me  at  an  even  greater  disadvantage  if  the  sub- 
ject had  been  Beethoven  or  Debussy) . 

His  stubbornness  in  this  matter  showed  mc 
a  side  of  Shaw  I  had  not  noticed;  it  seemed  to 
me  very  English,  I  don't  know  why;  but  from 
this  time  on  I  became  conscious  that  Shaw  was 
characteristically  English.  He  was  reluctant  to 
admit  Shakespeare's  gentleness  and  his  aban- 
donment to  passion ;  the  fact  that  the  loss  of  the 
woman  he  loved  embittered  him  and  turned  him 
from  a  writer  of  comedies  and  histories  into  a 
writer  of  tragedies,  degraded  him  in  Shaw's 
opinion  and  thus  made  me  conscious  of  a  British 
hardness  in  Shaw  which  came,  I  thought,  from 
want  of  passion,  from  lack  of  feeling.  Shaw 
was,  too,  always  impatient  of  weakness  and  of 
parasites — anything  but  a  lover  of  the  under- 
dog. I  grew  to  think  of  him  as  a  little  obstinate, 
English  in  mind  and  not  Celtic  at  all.  He  did 
not  change  his  intellectual  beliefs  as  readily  as 
the  Irish  do,  and  he  did  not  really  admire  the 
18 


Irish  ideal  of  life:  its  amiability  and  happy-go- 
lucky-ness  did  not  attract  him. 

He  underrated  the  enduring  fascination  of  this 
reckless  wastrel  type.  Yet  in  one  generation  the 
dour  Cromwellian  veterans  planted  in  Ireland 
all  yielded  to  the  charm  of  the  Irish  nature  and 
became  as  the  saying  went,  more  Irish  than  the 
Irish  themselves.  Even  if  one  prefers  the  Eng- 
lish rose  to  any  other  flower,  still  one  may  admire 
the  bravery  of  daffodils  dancing  naked  in  the 
wind,  or  the  magic  of  bluebells  blushing  in  the 
copses.  There  is  room  surely  in  God's  garden 
for  every  variety  of  flower. 

In  the  Boer  war  to  the  amazement  of  most  of 
his  admirers  Shaw  declared  himself  on  the  side 
of  the  British,  and  though  he  explained  his 
position  with  perfect  sincerity,  he  only  con- 
vinced us  that  Briton-like  he  mistook  English 
imperialism  for  the  cause  of  humanity.  Here 
is  his  defence :  to  some  it  may  appear  satisfying. 

"In  the  South  African  business  I  was  not  a 
pro-Boer,"  he  writes.  "I  never  got  over  Olive 
Schreiner's  'Story  of  an  African  Farm.'  Some 
few  years  before  the  war  Cronwright  Schreiner 
came  to  London.  I  asked  him  why  he  and 
Joubert  and  the  rest  put  up  with  Kruger  and  his 
obsolete  theocracy.  He  said  they  knew  all  about 
it  and  deplored  it,  but  that  the  old  man  would 
die  presently  and  then  Krugerism  would  be 
quietly  dropped  and  a  liberal  regime  introduced. 
I  suggested  that  it  might  be  dangerous  to  wait ; 

19 


but  it  was  evident  that  Com  Paul  was  too  strong 
for  them.  During  the  war  a  curious  thing  hap- 
pened in  Norway.  There  as  in  Germany  every- 
one took  it  for  granted  that  the  right  side  was 
the  anti-English  side.  Suddenly  Ibsen  asked  in 
his  grim  manner:  'Are  we  really  on  the  side  of 
Mr.  Kruger  and  his  Old  Testament?'  The 
effect  was  electrical.  Norway  shut  up.  I  felt 
like  Ibsen. 

"I  was,  of  course,  not  in  the  least  taken  in  by 
the  Times  campaign,  though  I  defended  the 
Times  against  the  accusation  of  bribery  on  the 
ground  that  it  was  not  necessary  to  pay  the  Times 
to  do  what  it  was  only  too  ready  to  do  for  noth- 
ing. But  I  saw  that  Kruger  meant  the  XVII 
Century  and  the  Scottish  XVII.  at  that;  and  so 
to  my  great  embarrassment,  I  found  myself  on 
the  side  of  the  mob  when  you  and  Chesterton 
and  John  Burns  and  Lloyd  George  were  facing 
the  music.  It  is  astonishing  what  bad  company 
advanced  views  may  get  one  into." 

That  Shaw  could  be  persuaded  by  this  remark 
of  Ibsen  strikes  me  as  characteristic;  the  English 
view  of  things  appeals  to  him  all  too  readily. 

His  championing  of  the  English  cause  in  the 
Boer  war  made  him  very  popular  with  the  vast 
majority  of  the  nation. 

"A  good  deal  of  common  sense  in  Shaw,"  was 
the  general  verdict,  and  accordingly  when  he 
spoke  and  wrote  for  the  fellaheen  in  Egypt  in 

20 


the  Denshawi  affair  he  was  easily  forgiven,  for 
in  time  of  need  he  had  been  on  the  popular, 
English  side. 

Again  and  again  I  shall  have  to  show  that 
this  Bazarof,  like  Moliere,  is  full  of  the  milk 
of  human  kindness. 

Towards  the  end  of  my  tenure  of  The  Satur- 
day Review,  Shaw  was  making  a  great  deal  of 
money  by  his  plays,  thanks  mainly  I  believe  to 
their  extroardinary  vogue  in  the  United  States. 

Casually  he  told  me  one  day  that  every  article 
he  wrote  for  me  cost  him  much  more  than  he 
got  for  it. 

"I  mean,"  he  said,  "the  same  time  spent  on  a 
comedy  would  pay  me  ten  times  as  much.  I'm 
losing  $500  a  week  at  least  through  writing  for 

you." 

"You  must  stop  writing  for  me  then,"  I  said, 
ruefully.  "But  I'm  about  to  sell  the  paper,  and 
if  you  could  have  kept  on  for  a  couple  of  months, 
say  till  September  (it  was  then  July  or  August 
if  I  remember  rightly),  I'd  be  greatly  obliged." 

"Say  no  more,"  he  exclaimed.  "I'll  go  on  till 
your  reign  comes  to  an  end." 

"It's  very  good  of  you,"  I  replied;  "but  I 
hardly  like  to  accept  such  a  sacrifice  from  you." 

"I  look  upon  it  as  only  fair,"  he  replied. 
"Your  bringing  me  to  The  Saturday  Review  to 
write  on  the  theatre  did  me  a  great  deal  of  good 
in  many  ways.    You  not  only  made  me  better 

21 


known,  but  forced  me  to  concentrate  on  the 
theatre  and  playwriting,  and  so  helped  me  to 
success.  It's  only  fair  I  should  pay  you  back  a 
part  of  what  you  helped  me  to  earn." 

"If  you  look  at  it  like  that,"  I  replied,  "I  have 
no  objection.  You  are  making  a  lot  of  money 
then  by  your  plays?" 

"Not  in  England,"  he  said,  "but  in  America 
more  than  I  can  spend.  My  banker  smiles  now 
when  he  sees  me,  and  is  in  a  perpetual  state  of 
wonderment,  for  miracle  on  miracle,  a  writer  is 
not  only  making  money,  but  saving  it." 

Some  time  before  this  Shaw  had  married  and 
had  taken  to  wife,  as  he  said  himself,  a  lady  who 
was  "more  than  self-supporting."  Consequently 
he  found  himself  in  1898  much  better  than  well 
off,  freed  from  all  sordid  care.  The  first  part 
of  his  life,  the  struggle  of  it,  came  thus  to  an  end. 

Shaw's  apprenticeship  as  Goethe  calls  it,  was 
now  over  and  done  with.  He  had  reached  the 
point  where  he  began  to  produce  as  a  master  and 
show  his  true  being.  There  will  be  nothing 
novel  in  his  growth,  nothing  that  should  surprise 
us;  he  develops  normally,  naturally,  and  his 
life's  history  is  to  be  found  in  his  works. 

Without  dissecting  his  plays — The  Devil's 
Disciple,  Caesar  and  Cleopatra,  and  best  of  all, 
I  think,  Candida,  I  have  to  notice  a  certain 
limitation  in  Shaw,  peculiarly  British,  which 
discovered  itself  in  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession. 

22 


There  is  no  excuse  for  founding  a  play  on  this 
subject  unless  you  are  minded  to  amend  or  over- 
throw the  conventional  standpoint.  If  you  only 
mean  to  affirm  and  defend  it,  why  touch  the 
fession  get  a  hint  of  the  truth,  they  don't  even 
scabrous  subject  at  all?  The  conventions  of  this 
world  are  surely  strong  enough  without  being 
buttressed  by  the  Bernard  Shaws.  As  soon  as 
the  hero  and  heroine  of  Mrs.  Warren's  Pro- 
fession get  a  hint  of  the  truth,  they  don't  even 
verify  it,  but  both  drop  all  thought  of  mar- 
riage and  bow  before  the  conventional  ideal, 
whereas  one  expects  the  hero  at  least  to  struggle 
and  revolt.  But  the  conventional  reading  of  the 
matter  is  peculiarly  British,  and  Shaw's  tame 
conformity  here  shows  that  his  interest  in  sex- 
questions  is  very  slight,  to  say  the  best  for  it. 

It  is  a  peculiar  dominance  of  mind  over  heart 
and  over  body,  a  rooted  preference  in  Shaw  for 
reflections  and  ideas  with  a  contempt  of  sensa- 
tions and  even  emotions  that  gives  the  Mephisto- 
philian  cast  to  his  personality.  His  excessive 
preoccupation  with  the  play  of  mind  often  hurts 
his  dramatic  writing.  For  instance,  in  The 
Devil's  Disciple,  after  Arms  and  the  Man  prob- 
ably his  most  popular  play,  Dick  Dudgeon 
and  Parson  Anderson  and  even  General  Bur- 
goyne  are  not  differentiated  in  character;  they 
are  all  Shaw.  In  the  second  act  Parson  Ander- 
son exclaims  "Minister  be  faugh!"  as  if  he  were 
the  Devil's  Disciple,  and  Burgoyne  sneers  at  the 

23 


marksmanship  of  the  British  army  and  talks 
about  "our  enemies  in  London — ^Jobbery  and 
Snobbery,  incompetence  and  Red  Tape,"  exactly 
as  Shaw  talks,  in  and  out  of  season. 

This  onesidedness  or  predominance  of  intel- 
lect over  heart  and  body,  leads  directly  to  the 
root-fact  of  Shaw's  nature. 

Very  early  in  our  acquaintance  I  had  been 
surprised  by  one  thing  in  him.  The  hero  of 
one  of  his  first  books  had  been  a  prizefighter; 
Shaw  made  him  very  strong  whereas  most  prize- 
fighters are  like  Fitzsimmons,  ape-armed,  but 
not  muscular.  Shaw's  extravagant  ill-placed 
admiration  of  strength  had  stuck  in  my  mind.  I 
soon  found  out  that  he  was  never  physically 
strong;  he  told  me  one  day  that  his  work 
often  exhausted  him  so  that  he  was  fain  to  go 
into  a  dark  room  and  lie  flat  on  his  back  on  the 
bare  floor,  every  muscle  relaxed,  for  hours,  just 
to  rest.  The  confession  surprised  me,  for  in  the 
prime  of  life  the  ordinary  man  does  not  get  tired 
out  in  this  way. 

A  certain  weakness  of  body  in  Shaw  was  suf- 
ficient to  explain  his  undue  admiration  of  the 
prizefighter's  strength  and  his  own  vegetarian- 
ism and  other  idiosyncracies.  But  if  asked  why 
he  abjures  meat  Shaw  retorts  that  flesh-eating  is 
an  unhealthy  practice  and  that  the  strongest  ani- 
mals such  as  the  bull  and  the  elephant  are  strict 
vegetarians;  but  that  hardly  satisfies  one.    The 

24 


truth,  I  think,  is  that  the  physical  delicacy  in 
Shaw  detaches  him  from  the  common  run  of 
men  whose  appetites  are  gross  and  insistent. 
This  comparative  weakness  of  the  body,  too, 
allows  his  brain  to  act  undisturbed  and  thus  his 
appeal  strikes  one  as  peculiarly  intellectual;  as 
thin,  so  to  speak,  or  at  least  thin-blooded. 

If  one  thinks  of  his  Caesar  and  Cleopatra 
and  Shakespeare's  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  the 
enormous  difference  between  the  two  men  be- 
comes manifest.  Shakespeare's  play  is  extraor- 
dinarily full-blooded  and  passionate;  he  is  over- 
sexed, one  would  say,  and  this  full  tide  of  lust 
in  him  shows  not  only  in  his  hero's  insane  aban- 
donment to  his  passion,  but  also  in  the  superb 
richness  of  language  and  glow  of  imagery.  His 
intellect  is  implicit,  showing  mainly  in  side  fig- 
ures such  as  Caesar  and  Enorbarbus  and  in  regal 
magnificence  of  phrase: 

Age  cannot  wither  her,  nor  custom  stale 
Her  infinite  variety;  other  women  cloy 
The  appetites  they  feed,  but  she  makes  hungry 
Where  most  she  satisfies;  for  vilest  things 
Become  themselves  in  her. 

Shaw's  work  in  comparison  is  thin  and  blood- 
less ;  intellectually  very  interesting,  but  the  col- 
oring is  subdued;  it  is  all  in  cool  grays  and  black 
shadows  like  a  Whistler  or  Franz  Hals  in  his 
old  age. 

When  I  ventured  to  hint  this  somewhere, 
Shaw  repelled  the  charge  very  vigorously.    He 

25 


was  astonished,  he  said,  to  find  me  falling  into 
such  an  error,  and  he  goes  on : 

"Archer  says  'Shaw's  plays  reek  with  sex'  and 
he  was  right 

"I  have  shown  by  a  whole  series  of  stage 
couples  how  the  modern  man  has  become  a  phil- 
anderer like  Goethe  and  how  the  modern  woman 
has  had  to  develop  an  aggressive  strategy  to 
counter  his  attempts  to  escape  from  his  servitude 
to  her 

"In  the  tiny  one  act  farcial  comedy  I  pub- 
lished the  other  day,  I  put  the  physical  act  of 
sexual  intercourse  on  the  stage. 

"Of  course,  I  have  to  be  like  all  live  writers 
in  constant  reaction  against  the  excesses  of  my 
time.  .  .  .  The  infatuated  amorism  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  made  it  necessary  for  me  to  say 
with  emphasis  that  life  and  not  love  is  the 
supreme  good 

"To  conclude  with  a  curious  observation, 
though  poverty  and  fastidiousness  prevented  me 
from  having  a  concrete  love  affair  until  I  was 
twenty-nine,  the  five  novels  I  wrote  before  that 
(novels  were  the  only  wear  then)  show  much 
more  knowledge  of  sex  than  most  people  seem 
to  acquire  after  bringing  up  a  family  of  fifteen." 

Shaw  was  "on  his  own"  in  London  at  twenty ; 
for  nine  years,  then,  he  was  an  ascetic;  would 
the  ordinary  man  have  been  able  to  make  the 
same  boast  after  nine  months  or  even  weeks?    I 

26 


am  very  sure  Shakespeare  could  not.  Shaw's 
defence  seems  to  me  to  corroborate  my  view  of 
his  comparative  indifference  to  sex. 

Naturally  Shaw  regards  his  aloofness  from 
sex-intoxication  as  a  positive  virtue,  and  he 
argues  the  matter  very  ably  in  his  preface  to  his 
"Plays  for  Puritans,"  in  which  he  asserts  that 
his  picture  of  Caesar  is  better  than  Shakes- 
peare's.    He  says: 

"I  have  a  technical  objection  to  making  sexual 
infatuation  a  tragic  theme.  Experience  proves 
that  it  is  only  effective  in  the  comic  spirit.  We 
can  bear  to  see  Mrs.  Quickly  pawning  her  plates 
for  love  of  Falstaff,  but  not  Antony  running 
away  from  the  battle  of  Actium  for  love  of 
Cleopatra.  Let  realism  have  its  demonstration, 
comedy  its  criticism,  or  even  bawdry  its  horse- 
laugh at  the  expense  of  sexual  infatuation,  if  it 
must;  but  to  ask  us  to  subject  our  souls  to  its 
ruinous  glamor,  to  worship  it,  deify  it,  and  imply 
that  it  alone  makes  our  life  worth  living,  is 
nothing  but  folly  gone  mad  erotically — a  thing 
compared  to  which  Falstaff's  unbeglamored 
drinking  and  drabbing  is  respectable  and  right- 
minded.  Whoever,  then,  expects  to  find  Cleo- 
patra a  Circe  and  Caesar  a  hog  in  these  pages, 
had  better  lay  down  my  book  and  be  spared  a 
disappointment. 

"In  Caesar,  I  have  used  another  character 
with  which  Shakespeare  has  been  beforehand. 

27 


But  Shakespeare,  who  knew  human  weaknesses 
so  well,  never  knew  human  strength  of  the 
Caesarian  type." 

And  he  goes  on : 

"Caesar  was  not  in  Shakespeare,  nor  in  the 
epoch,  now  fast  waning,  which  he  inaugurated. 
It  cost  Shakespeare  no  pang  to  write  Caesar 
down  for  the  merely  technical  purpose  of  writ- 
ing Brutus  up.  And  what  a  Brutus!  A  perfect 
Girondin." 

Much  of  this  is  excellent  criticism,  but  it  does 
not  do  justice  to  Shakespeare.  Shaw's  Caesar  is 
Bernard  Shaw  and  his  contempt  for  Cleopatra's 
wiles  is  very  amusing  and  his  intellectual  appre- 
ciation of  his  position  and  his  duties  is  quite 
admirable,  but  I  do  not  find  in  Shaw's  Caesar 
either  the  ruthlessness  of  the  Roman  or  the  will 
power  and  dignity  of  the  world  conqueror. 
Plutarch's  Caesar  gives  us  a  far  better  picture 
of  the  man.  Who  can  ever  forget  young  Caesar 
dominating  the  pirates  and  daring  to  tell  the 
chief  to  his  face  that  he  would  hang  him  after 
paying  him  his  ransom.  I  find  more  of  the  real 
Caesar  in  Shakespeare  than  in  Shaw.  When 
Antony  challenges  Caesar  to  fight  his  answer  is 
soul-revealing: 

"Let  the  old  ruffian  know 

I  have  many  other  ways  to  die;  meantime 

Laugh  at  his  challenge." 

The  master  of  the  world  has  nothing  but  dis- 
28 


dain  for  the  "swordcr."  And  when  his  deserted 
sister  weeps  and  he  has  to  tell  her  that  Antony 
has  gone  back  to  the  serpent  of  old  Nile,  he 
adds : 

^'Cheer  your  heart 

But  let  determin'd  things  to  destiny 
Hold   unbewail'd  their  way." 

There  is  no  line  in  all  literature  with  so  much 
of  Rome's  majestic  domination  in  it. 

Greatness  of  insight  and  of  soul  is  revealed 
again  and  again  in  Shakespeare's  Caesar. 

I  have  always  thought  "Candida,"  Shaw's 
finest  performance,  his  best  play — the  perfect 
flower  of  his  art  and  being.  The  kindness  in  it, 
the  broad  humanity  are  the  very  perfume  of 
Shaw's  spirit. 

I  have  personal  reasons  to  congratulate  my- 
self on  Shaw's  kindness  of  heart,  for  when  I  left 
France  and  came  to  America  and  told  here 
what  Shaw  and  others  have  since  proved  to  be 
the  truth  about  the  war  and  England's  responsi- 
bility for  it,  I  found  that  I  was  being  treated  in 
England  as  a  sort  of  traitor  because  I  preferred 
to  be  true  to  truth  rather  than  to  English  inter- 
ests. The  baser  sort  howled  at  me  in  every  news- 
paper, and  even  men  like  Arnold  Bennett,  who 
had  followed  me  with  praise  for  years,  were  not 
ashamed  now  to  hint  at  corruption  in  order  to 
explain  my  incomprehensible  admiration  of 
certain  German  virtues.  But  when  I  was  at- 
tacked in  some  weekly  paper,  Shaw  defended 

29 


me  in  his  own  way  with  the  old  kindliness.  He 
and  I  have  been  able  to  differ  about  the  war 
without  impairing  our  friendship. 

The  finest  thing  about  Shaw  is  that  being 
placed  on  a  pedestal  and  flattered  beyond 
measure  has  not  increased  his  arrogance;  on  the 
contrary  it  has  rather  diminished  his  self-asser- 
tion and  increased  his  kindliness.  So  long  as 
men  denied  him  the  position  he  was  conscious 
of  deserving  he  demanded  it  loudly  in  and  out 
of  season;  but  as  soon  as  they  treated  him  as 
one  of  the  Immortals  and  paid  him  honor,  he 
became  more  considerate  of  others  and  less  in- 
clined to  stand  on  the  extreme  verge  of  his  claim. 
Like  Meredith  he  can  see  that  too  much  honor 
is  not  good  for  a  man  who  has  to  live  his  life 
and  do  his  work.  Measured  by  high  standards 
Shaw  withstands  the  tests  triumphantly,  and 
what  a  delight  it  is  to  be  able  in  all  sincerity  to 
say  about  a  contemporary  writer  that  his  char- 
acter is  at  least  as  noble  as  his  best  work. 

It  is  the  latest  thing  he  has  done  that  sheds 
most  light  on  Shaw's  powers.  At  sixty  odd  he 
has  put  his  critical  and  incidentally  his  creative 
faculty  to  the  severest  proof.  In  his  "Preface" 
to  Androcles  and  the  Lion  he  has  given  us  his 
view  of  Jesus.  When  Shaw  was  defending  me 
in  a  London  journal  I  replied  that  I  was  trying 
to  write  about  Jesus,  had  indeed  been  studying 
the  Master  for  years  with  that  object. 

30 


Shaw  at  once  wrote  to  me  on  the  matter,  and 
I  have  pleasure  in  publishing  here  that  part  of 
his  excellent  letter: 

"It  seems  to  be  my  destiny  to  dog  your  foot- 
steps with  apparent  plagiarisms.  The  Shake- 
speare effort  was  bad  enough,  but  you  now  tell 
me  that  you  are  doing  the  life  of  Jesus.  I  am 
doing  exactly  the  same  thing  by  way  of  preface 
to  Androcles  and  the  Lion,  which  is  a  Christian 
martyr  play;  so  you  must  hurry  up. 

"They  tell  me  that  what  I  have  gathered  from 
the  gospel  narratives  and  the  rest  of  the  New 
Testament,  which  I  have  read  through  atten- 
tively for  the  first  time  since,  as  a  boy,  I  read 
the  whole  Bible  through  out  of  sheer  bravado, 
is  much  the  same  as  Renan's  extract.  I  do  not 
know  whether  this  is  true;  for  I  have  never  read 
the  Vie  de  Jesu,  though  I  will  look  it  up 
presently. 

"Anyhow,  it  is  rather  significant  that  you  and 
I  and  George  Moore  should  be  on  the  same 
tack.  The  main  thing  that  I  have  tried  to  bring 
out,  and  indeed  the  only  thing  that  made  the 
job  worth  doing  for  me,  is  that  modern  sociology 
and  biology  arc  steadily  bearing  Jesus  out  in  his 
peculiar  economics  and  theology." 

In  reply  I  wrote  that  plagiarism  or  no  pla- 
giarism, I  should  be  extremely  interested  in 
reading  what  he  had  written  and  would  let  him 

31 


know  what  I  felt  about  it  as  soon  as  I  received 
hi*  book.  I  was  greatly  struck  with  Shaw's 
essay  on  Jesus,  and  here  I  have  set  down  in  haste, 
I  admit,  my  first  thoughts  on  the  work. 

Like  most  of  us  in  this  time  Shaw  has  always 
been  obsessed  with  the  idea  of  reforming  the 
world,  remoulding  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  de- 
sire and  from  first  to  last  he  has  shown  a  rational 
consistency  of  thought. 

Wells  may  be  a  Socialist  to-day  and  something 
else  to-morrow;  but  Shaw  is  no  flibbertigibbet 
or  weather-cock.  He  was  a  convinced  socialist 
at  the  beginning  of  his  career  when  he  was 
young  and  poor,  and  now,  thirty  years  later, 
rich  and  honored,  he  is  nobly  intent  on  preach- 
ing the  same  doctrine. 

That  is  why  this  essay  of  his  on  Jesus  is  of 
supreme  importance  to  any  one  who  wishes  to 
understand  and  classify  him  or  assimilate  his 
contribution  to  modern  thought. 

It  is  characteristic  of  Shaw  that  it  is  not  Jesus 
as  a  man  that  interests  him ;  Christian  doctrines 
would  have  been  preached  and  practised,  he 
says  roundly,  "if  Jesus  had  never  existed."  This 
is  probably  true  though  we  know  no  one  in  these 
last  nineteen  centuries  who  could  have  taken  the 
place  of  Jesus  or  done  his  work.  Still  in  time 
no  doubt  humanity  would  have  produced  an- 
other man  of  similar  insight  and  sweetness.  To 
Shaw  "it  js  the  doctrine  and  not  the  man  that 

32 


matters."  Here,  as  always,  Shaw  is  first  of  all 
a  preacher  and  not  a  poet;  a  dramatist  if  you 
like,  because  he  is  a  born  preacher,  as  Moliere 
was,  and  not  for  love  of  the  drama: 

"I  am  no  more  a  Christian  than  Pilate  was, 
or  you,  gentle  reader;  and  yet  ....  I  am  ready 
to  admit  that  after  contemplating  the  world  and 
human  nature  for  nearly  sixty  years,  I  see  no 
way  out  of  the  world's  misery  but  the  way  which 
would  have  been  found  by  Christ's  will  if  he 
had  undertaken  the  work  of  a  modern  practical 


statesman." 


-  Very  notable  words,  in  my  opinion,  and 
stamped  with  a  high  sincerity.  Naturally,  Shaw 
goes  on  to  tell  us  that  he  knows  "a  great  deal 
more  about  economics  and  politics  than  Jesus 
did,"  and  this  superiority  of  his  is  based  appar- 
ently on  the  fact  that  he  has  no  sympathy  with 
"vagabonds  and  talkers"  who  would  subvert  the 
existing  social  order  in  the  delusion  that  the  end 
of  the  world  is  at  hand — a  statetnent  which 
seems  reasonable  though  perhaps  superfluous. 

Shaw  then  proceeds  to  doubt  whether  Jesus 
ever  existed,  and  ends  up  by  asserting  that  it 
does  not  matter  whether  he  did  or  not.  Let  us 
look  at  this  assertion  in  terms  of  another  art. 
There  are  half  a  dozen  pictures  attributed  to  X, 
who  has  been  classed  for  centuries  as  probably 
the  greatest  of  painters.  Shaw  looks  at  them,  sees 
they  are  all  by  the  same  hand  (Paul  even  has 

33 


nothing  to  do  with  them),  admits  that  they  have 
not  been  equalled  in  two  thousand  years,,  and 
yet  doubts  whether  the  Master  ever  existed 
really,  "any  more  than  Hamlet." 

One  gasps  at  such  a  lame  and  impotent  con- 
clusion. Who  then  painted  the  pictures?  wt 
ask.  And  Shaw  replies,  "One  symbol  is  as  good 
as  another.  .  .  .  Confucius  said  certain  things 
before  Jesus";  yet  "for  some  reason  the  imag- 
ination of  white  mankind  has  picked  out  Jesus 
as  Nazareth  as  the  Christ,  and  attributed  all  the 
Christian  doctrines  to  him" — let  us  leave  it  at 
that,  he  adds  implicitly.  Fortunately  or  unfor- 
tunately, this  seems  to  me  not  a  theory,  but  a 
demonstrable  fact.  The  pictures  proclaim  the 
painter,  one  single  creative  mind,  and  Jesus,  if 
we  can  get  to  know  him,  is  more  important  than 
his  teachings  or  parables,  just  as  Shaw,  when  we 
get  to  know  him,  is  more  important  than  his 
plays  or  even  his  prefaces. 

Curiously  enough,  another  dispute  Shaw  and 
I  had  over  Shakespeare,  crops  up  again  in  his 
criticism  of  Jesus.  He  objected  strenuously  to 
the  gentle,  loving,  humane,  melancholy,  philoso- 
phising thinker  and  poet  as  the  man  Shakes- 
peare, or  rather  he  accepted  all  the  epithets, 
while  protesting  that  the  "gentle"  was  overdone. 
He  has  exactly  the  same  quarrel  with  Jesus.  He 
is  in  the  Ercles  vein ;  he  cries : 

"  *Gcntle  Jesus,  meek  and  mild,'  is  a  snivel- 


ling  modern  invention,  with  no  warrant  in  the 
gospels." 

This  assertion  made  me  doubt  my  eyes.  Did 
not  Jesus  advise  us  to  turn  the  other  cheek, 
and  to  give  the  cloak  to  the  robber  who  had 
taken  the  coat?  Did  he  not  teach  that  you 
should  do  good  to  your  enemies?  How  does  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  begin : 
Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit;  for  theirs  is  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

And  to  leave  you  in  no  doubt  Jesus  strikes 
the  same  note  again: 

Blessed  are  the  meek,  for  they  shall  inherit  the 
earth. 

This  "gentleness,"  this  meekness,  this  forgiv- 
ing of  injuries,  this  loving  kindness  "a  snivelling 
modern  invention!" 

Shaw,  Shaw,  why  deniest  thou  me? 

It  is  as  certain  as  anything  can  be  that  it 
was  just  this  gentleness,  this  meekness,  this  lov- 
ing kindness  of  Jesus  that  caught  the  imagination 
of  humanity,  and  won  for  him  the  passionate 
idolatry  of  men.  Shaw,  a  combative  Anglo- 
Saxon,  may  find  himself  more  easily  in  the  Jesus 
who  blasted  the  barren  fig-tree  and  scourged  the 
money-changers  out  of  the  Temple;  but  that  was 
not  the  spirit  men  love  in  Jesus.  Paul  could 
have  done  all  those  things  or  Judas  Maccabeus 
or  any  of  ten  thousand  brave  Jewish  rebels  who 
threw  their  lives  to  a  protest,  minted  their  souls 
in  a  curse. 

35 


The  instinct  of  humanity  that  has  chosen  Jesus 
— "for  some  reason,"  as  Shaw  remarks — is  pro- 
foundly right;  forgiveness  is  nobler  than  pun- 
ishment and  lovingkindness  more  soul-subduing 
than  any  tyranny.  It  is  this  gentle,  loving  Jesus 
that  takes  the  spirit  like  the  fragrance  of  a  flower 
or  the  innocent  loveliness  of  a  child. 

Jesus  was  the  first  to  discover  the  soul,  the 
first  to  speak  to  it  with  certainty,  and  because  of 
the  divination  he  is  throned  in  the  hearts  of  men 
forever : 

//  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive. 

I  attach  great  importance  to  the  personality 
of  Jesus  for  many  reasons  which  it  would  require 
too  much  time  and  space  to  set  forth  here;  but 
one  reason  may  be  indicated.  If  one  studies  the 
personality  of  Jesus,  one  can  perceive,  I  ven- 
ture to  say,  a  certain  growth  in  his  mind,  certain 
moments  of  development  which  bring  him 
nearer  to  us  and  make  him  clearer.  It  was 
Lecky,  I  believe,  the  author  of  The  History  of 
Rationalism,  who  first  said  that  long  after 
Christianity  had  perished  as  a  creed,  Jesus 
would  live  as  an  ideal.  If  he  had  said  as  an 
influence,  I  should  hare  agreed  with  him:  the 
influence  and  spirit  of  Jesus  are  certain  to  endure 
for  hundreds  of  centuries  to  come :  But  no  man 
can  be  an  "ideal"  to  us;  even  Jesus  cannot  fill 
the  horizon;  the  time  has  come  to  sec  him  as 

36 


he  was,  the  wisest  and  sweetest  of  the  sons  of 
men,  whose  place  in  the  Pantheon  of  Humanity 
is  assured  forever.  His  surpassing  quality 
makes  it  unnecessary  to  prove  his  existence  by 
the  testimony  of  Paul,  or  by  the  references 
to  his  crucifixion  in  Tacitus  and  Josephus. 
It  is  impossible  to  study  Rembrandt's  pictures 
chronologically  without  realizing  Rembrandt's 
growth,  impossible  to  read  Shakespeare  and  not 
see  his  personality  passing  from  flower  to  fruit, 
in  the  same  way  we  cannot  deny  Jesus  or  ignore 
the  Son  of  Man  who  became  the  Son  of  God. 

Three  or  four  of  his  parables  or  short  stories 
are  the  finest  ever  written;  a  dozen  of  his  say- 
ings come  from  a  height  of  thought  and  feeling 
hardly  reached  by  any  other  son  of  man ;  he  was 
at  once  saint  and  seer  and  artist  of  the  noblest, 
and  the  way  he  was  treated  by  the  world  is 
symbolic  of  the  fate  of  genius  everywhere.  His 
life  showed  (as  he  was  the  first  to  see),  that  a 
prophet  is  not  without  honor  save  in  his  own 
country  and  amid  his  own  kin ;  his  death  estab- 
lished the  dreadful  truth  that  in  measure  as  one 
grows  better  than  his  fellow  men,  he  incurs  their 
hatred.  The  highest  genius  in  this  world  was 
beaten  and  scourged  and  finally  crowned  in  de- 
rision with  thorns.  Crucifixion  is  the  reward 
given  by  men  to  their  supreme  Guides  and 
Teachers. 

Shaw  spends  a  hundred  pages  or  more  in  a 
37 


very  fine  and  fair  criticism  of  the  four  gospels: 
he  establishes,  I  am  inclined  to  believe,  several 
truths  which  more  learned  commentators  have 
failed  to  perceive.  He  says  that  Luke  has  added 
sentiment  and  romance  to  the  story  told  by  Mat- 
thew and  Mark,  and  declares  that  "it  is  Luke's 
Jesus  who  has  won  our  hearts."  He  believes  on 
good  grounds,  I  think,  that  John's  gospel  was 
written  by  the  beloved  disciple  himself,  and 
must  be  brought  within  the  first  century. 

The  old  question  as  to  the  credibility  of  the 
gospels  Shaw  declares  unimportant:  "Belief  is 
merely  a  matter  of  taste." 

And  so  he  comes  back  to  his  beginning: 
"Jesus  remains  unshaken  as  the  practical  man" 
and  we  stand  exposed  as  "the  fools,  the  blunder- 
ers, the  unpractical  visionaries."  For  the  root 
fact  remains :  our  system  of  distributing  wealth 
"is  wildly  and  monstrously  wrong.  We  have 
million  dollar  babies  side  by  side  with  paupers 
worn  out  by  a  long  life  of  unremitted  drudgery. 
One  adult  in  every  five  dies  in  a  workhouse,  a 
public  hospital  or  a  madhouse.  In  cities  like 
London  the  proportion  is  very  nearly  one  in  two. 
This  distribution  is  effected  by  violence  pure  and 
simple.  If  you  demur  you  are  sold  up.  If  you 
resist  the  selling  up  you  are  bludgeoned  and  im- 
prisoned. Iniquity  can  go  no  further.  .  .  . 
Democracy  in  France  and  the  United  States  is 
an  imposture  and  a  delusion.    It  reduces  justice 

38 


and  law  to  a  farce:  law  becomes  merely  an 
instrument  for  keeping  the  poor  in  subjection. 
Workmen  are  tried  not  by  a  jury  of  their  peers, 
but  by  conspiracies  of  their  exploiters.  The 
press  is  the  press  of  the  rich  and  the  curse  of 
the  poor.  The  priest  is  the  complement  of  the 
policeman  ....  and,  worst  of  all,  marriage 
becomes  a  class  affair." 

Never  was  there  such  a  root  and  branch  con- 
demnation of  human  society.  And  the  remedy 
is  as  sweeping.    Shaw  states  it  briefly: 

"We  must  begin  by  holding  the  right  to  an 
income  as  sacred  and  equal  just  as  we  now  begin 
by  holding  the  right  to  life  as  sacred  and  equal. 
The  one  right  is  only  a  restatement  of  the  other. 
....  Jesus  was  a  first  rate  political  economist." 

Now  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  that  this 
wholesale  indictment  of  the  existing  social  order 
is  as  one-sided  and  extravagant  as  the  eulogies 
of  an  individualist  of  the  Manchester  school; 
the  bomb  is  not  the  best  answer  to  the  multi- 
millionaire, though  it  is  a  very  natural  one.  The 
truth  is,  both  individualism  and  socialism  must 
find  a  place  in  modern  life:  just  as  analytic  and 
synthetic  chemistry  both  find  their  place;  but 
in  my  opinion  Shaw  is  right  in  the  first  article 
of  his  creed;  the  equal  right  to  live  presupposes 
the  right  to  necessaries  and  a  fair  living  wage. 
As  we  do  not  kill  the  aged  and  infirm  we  must 
provide  a  living  for  all;  that  is  the  root  fact  of 
the  new  industrial  civilization. 

39 


And  now  what  is  the  sum  total  of  the  whole 
story?  My  readers  must  see  that  I  regard  Shaw 
the  iconoclast,  Shaw  the  railer  at  British  con- 
ventions and  British  hypocrisies,  Shaw  who  has 
been  wise  enough  or  lucky  enough  to  mount  him- 
self on  a  stout  bank-balance  instead  of  an  aged 
Rosinante,  and  from  that  vantage  to  attack 
British  conceit  and  complacent  materialism; 
Shaw  the  scoffer  and  sceptic  and  socialist,  as 
assuredly  the  most  powerful  and  highest  moral 
influence  in  the  Britain  of  this  time.  He  has 
taken  the  place  left  vacant  by  Carlyle  and  has 
given  proof  of  as  fine  a  courage  and  as  high  a 
devotion  to  Truth  as  the  Scot.  He  has  scoffed 
at  the  idea  of  a  personal  immortality  as  con- 
temptuously as  at  the  idea  of  a  state  where  the 
few  suffer  from  too  great  wealth  almost  as  much 
as  the  many  suffer  from  an  unmerited  destitution. 

Shaw's  religion,  his  view  that  is  of  the  true 
meaning  of  life  deserves  to  be  stated: 

"This  is  the  true  joy  in  life,"  he  says,  "the 
being  used  for  a  purpose  recognized  by  yourself 
as  a  mighty  one;  the  being  thoroughly  worn  out 
before  you  are  thrown  on  the  scrap-heap;  the 
being  a  force  of  nature  instead  of  a  feverish 
selfish  little  clod  of  ailments  and  grievances  com- 
plaining that  the  world  will  not  devote  itself 
to  making  you  happy." 

In  the  main  this  is  the  creed  of  Carlyle  too 
40 


and  of  Goethe  though  the  great  German  brings 
joy  into  it  by  making  the  individual  himself 
work  consciously  for  the  highest  purpose. 

Everyone,  I  think,  who  treats  of  this  period  in 
history  will  have  to  consider  Bernard  Shaw  as 
far  and  away  the  most  important  figure  in  Great 
Britain  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century.  True, 
he  has  no  new  word  in  religion  for  us,  no  glimpse 
even  of  new  and  vital  truth;  but  he  walks  hon- 
estly by  such  gleams  of  light  as  come  to  him 
in  the  present. 

And  some  of  Shaw's  plays  are  at  least  equal  in 
worth  to  his  critical  work  and  will  hold  the 
stage  for  generations  to  come.  He  is  among  the 
greatest  of  English  humorists.  Everyone  can  see 
now  that  Shakespeare's  humor  was  adventitious 
and  fortunate  rather  than  characteristic.  Take 
Falstaff  out  of  his  work  and  all  the  other  clowns, 
including  even  Dogberry,  would  hardly  furnish 
forth  one  evening's  entertainment.  And  Fal- 
staflf  and  Dogberry  belong  to  the  earliest  part  of 
Shakespeare's  life;  after  thirty  he  became  in- 
creasingly serious.  But  Shaw's  humor  is  richer 
to-day  at  sixty  odd  than  when  he  began;  the 
flashes  of  it  illumine  every  part  of  his  work.  The 
British  stage  knows  no  comedies  superior  to 
John  Bull's  Other  Island,  Candida,  and  Caesar 
and  Cleopatra." 

And  this  is  the  Shaw  that  will  hold  an  unique 
place  in  English  literature;  the  humorist,  icono- 

41 


clast  and  prophet;  the  laughing  philosopher, 
whom  no  one  to-day  can  afford  to  ignore. 

The  boy  has  often  been  called  seriously  the 
father  of  the  man  and  before  I  completed  this 
sketch  I  wanted  to  get  some  picture  of  Shaw 
as  a  child  which  would  either  change  or  con- 
firm my  estimate  of  him.  After  many  vain  at- 
tempts I  got  a  little  snapshot  of  him  as  a  boy 
from  Mrs.  Ada  Tyrrell,  wife  of  the  late  Regius 
Professor  of  Greek  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin. 
Mrs.  Tyrrell  is  herself  a  poet  of  rare  talent  and 
has  the  keen  yet  generous  eyes  of  a  very  gifted 
woman.    She  writes : 

"I  can  tell  you  very  little  more  than  you  know 
yourself  of  George's  youth  after  the  age  of 
twelve  or  fourteen,  as  his  family  left  Ireland  to 
live  in  London  about  then.  My  first  memory  of 
George  is  a  little  boy  in  a  Holland  overall  sit- 
ting at  a  table  constructing  a  toy  theatre. 
'Sonny'  the  other  Shaws  called  him,  then.  We 
lived  a  few  doors  from  them,  and  our  mothers 
being  both  singers,  was  the  bond  between  us. 
Even  at  that  early  age — George  was  about  ten — 
he  had  a  superior  manner  to  his  sisters  and  me, 
a  sort  of  dignity  withal,  and  I  remember  feeling 
rather  flattered  when  he  condescended  to  explain 
anything  that  I  asked  him;  though  we  girls  were 
a  year  or  two  older. 

"I  should  say,  as  well  as  I  can  judge  between 
the  two  men,  Oscar  Wilde  and  G.  B.  S.,  that 

42 


George  is  a  good  man  all  through  and  Oscar 
had  only  good  impulses,  though  with  more  sen- 
timent  than  George;  more  romance  in  fact, 
which  is  always  a  charm  to  me.  I  know  George 
to  have  been  the  best  of  sons  and  brothers;  he 
is  generous,  not  alone  to  worthy  objects,  but  lo 
the  unworthy  as  well.  I  often  think  that  the 
luxury  of  having  unlimited  money  is  that  one 
can  give  to  both." 

This  is  the  highest  merit  of  the  man,  that 
while  mocking  sentimentality  he  is  always  true 
to  the  best  in  him  as  needle  to  the  pole.  He 
has  shown  us  all  that  a  Briton  can  rise  above 
secular  British  prejudices  and  that  ingrained 
English  habit  of  excusing  oafish  stupidity  by  the 
conceit  of  moral  superiority,  as  if  dullness  and 
goodness  were  Siamese  twins. 

He  has  pictured  Caesar  standing  before  the 
Sphinx  and  admitting  that  he,  too,  is  "half 
brute,  half  woman  and  half  God,  and  no  part 
of  man."  The  confession  though  doubtless  per- 
sonal, does  not  do  Shaw  justice.  I  have  always 
thought  of  him  as  of  Greatheart  in  Bunyan*s 
allegory,  a  man  so  high-minded  and  courageous 
he  will  take  the  kingdom  of  heaven  by  storm  and 
yet  so  full  of  the  milk  of  human  kindness  that  he 
suffers  with  all  the  disadvantages  of  the  weak 
and  all  the  disabilities  of  the  dumb.  He  is  the 
only  man  since  William  Blake  who  has  enlarged 
our  conception  of  English  character;  thanks  to 

43 


the  Irish  strain  in  him  he  encourages  us  to  hope 
that  English  genius  may  yet  become  as  free  of 
insular  taint  as  the  vagrant  air  and  as  beneficent 
as  sunshine. 


44 


Rudyard  Kipling 


RUDYARD  KIPLING 

T  was,  I  think,  in  1890  or  1891  that  I 
first  met  Rudyard  Kipling  in  Lon- 
don, shortly  after  his  return  from 
India.  I  knew  of  him  before  I  saw 
him.  A  couple  of  years  earlier  a 
grey-blue  paper  book  containing  some  stories  of 
Kipling  had  fallen  into  my  hands.  It  bore  the 
imprint  of  some  Indian  publisher,  and  I  was 
enthralled,  as  every  one  was  enthralled,  by  the 
superb  narrative  power  displayed  in  those 
"plain  tales"  of  excelling  artistry.  True,  it  was 
rapid  impressionist  work,  slapdash,  some  called 
it;  but  it  was  supremely  effective  and  original — 
style,  treatment  and  subject  all  in  perfect  har- 
mony. "Soldiers  Three"  followed,  and  one  be- 
gan to  see  that  the  reign  of  the  English  in  India 
had  at  length  produced  a  singer. 

Some  of  the  stories  were  prefaced  by  verses, 
and  one  heard  it  said  that  young  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling was  a  still  greater  master  of  verse  than  of 
prose.  A  little  later  I  got  hold  of  "Depart- 
mental Ditties"  and  simply  swallowed  them; 
but  Kipling  to  me  was  not  a  poet,  his  character- 
istic gift  was  that  of  the  storyteller;  even  in 
verse  he  was  a  ballad-writer  rather  than  a  mas- 
ter-singer. 

45 


I  forget  whether  I  wrote  asking  him  to  call 
on  me  in  the  office  of  The  Fortnightly  Review, 
or  whether  I  asked  my  assistant,  the  Rev.  John 
Verschoyle  to  bring  him;  but  at  any  rate  he 
came  to  the  office  andl  took  to  him  at  once.  He 
was  very  young,  younger  even  than  I  had  pic- 
tured him:  a  short,  sturdy,  bullet-headed  man, 
wearing  big  glasses  which  did  not  altogether 
hide  the  keen  regard  of  sharp  eyes.  The  face, 
like  the  figure,  was  strongly  cast  and  well-pro- 
portioned. Though  he  was  sincerity  itself,  with- 
out pose  or  affectation  of  any  kind,  ingenuously 
sincere  and  open  indeed,  his  personality  was  not 
impressive  in  any  way. 

That  very  first  afternoon  we  talked  for  a 
couple  of  hours:  I  was  intensely  interested  in 
his  stories,  eager  to  tell  him  how  much  I  liked 
them,  eager  to  know  too  whether  he  preferred 
to  work  in  verse  or  prose. 

How  long  had  he  been  in  India?  How  had 
he  come  to  drift  out  there?  Were  the  experi- 
ences worth  the  pains  of  exile? — in  short  a  hun- 
dred personal  details.  I  had  not  written  any- 
thing of  note  at  the  time.  I  was  desperately 
curious  about  his  past  and  future  work.  I 
wanted  to  measure  him  correctly:  was  he  a  really 
great  man  or  not?  He  told  me  that  his  father 
had  lived  and  done  his  work  in  India  as  a  civil 
engineer,  that  he  himself  was  born  in  Bombay  in 
1865,  and  that  he  had  helped  to  edit  a  paper 

46 


there  from  1882  to  1889.  He  had  been  in  China, 
Japan  and  the  United  States  as  well,  yet  pro- 
posed now  to  cast  anchor  if  not  to  strike  root  in 
England:  "You  have  no  idea  how  good  the 
English  countryside  looks  to  me  after  India," 
he  exclaimed :  "Sussex  seems  a  bit  of  Paradise." 
The  office  of  The  Fortnightly  Review  at  that 
time  was  a  sort  of  debating  club  from  four  to 
seven  every  afternoon.  My  assistant  and  friend, 
the  Rev.  John  Verschoyle,  was  an  extraordinary 
man.  Of  all  the  men  I  have  met,  Swinburne 
alone  had  a  greater  poetic  gift:  one  proof  will 
suffice.  He  went  from  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
to  Cambridge  when  he  was  only  seventeen  years 
of  age,  and  while  still  a  Freshmen  was  asked 
to  write  some  Greek  verses  for  the  cover  of  the 
University  Calendar:  they  are  there  to  be  read 
still,  though  written  forty  years  ago — ,convinc- 
ing  evidence  of  an  astonishing  talent.  Ver- 
schoyle was  a  strikingly  handsome  man,  with 
regular  features,  fair  hair,  blue  eyes  and  long 
Viking-fair  moustache.  The  most  noticeable 
things  about  h'im  were  his  high-domed  forehead 
and  extraordinary  breadth  of  shoulder:  though 
of  barely  middle-height,  he  was  exceptionally 
powerful.  Verschoyle  was  well-read  in  English 
literature  and  had  an  even  greater  mastery  of 
English  verse  than  of  Greek.  His  knowledge  of 
English  poetry  was  like  Swinburne's,  encyclo- 
paedic, yet  imbrued  with  passionate  prejudices; 

47 


he  thought  Shelley  and  Wordworth  the  greatest 
English  poets  after  Shakespeare,  and  as  I  pre- 
ferred Blake  and  Browning  and  Keats,  our  ar- 
guments were  "frequent  and  free."  Of  course  in 
knowledge  of  the  technique  of  verse  I  was  not 
in  the  same  class  with  him :  he  was  a  master  and 
I  was  not  even  a  deep  student.  I  have  said  so 
much  about  Verschoyle  (the  news  of  whose 
death  has  just  reached  me!)  because  his  discus- 
sions with  Kipling  threw  a  flood  of  light  on  both 
men. 

One  afternoon  stands  out  in  my  memory  with 
astonishing  clearness,  and  it  was  characteristic 
of  many.  Kipling  came  into  the  office,  and 
when  asked  what  he  had  been  doing,  replied: 
"Some  verses."  They  were  the  passionate  anti- 
Irish  verses,  afterwards  published  under  the 
heading  "Cleared!"  I  read  them  with  shrink- 
ing and  dislike.  I  saw  their  power,  knew  too 
that  they  would  cause  a  sensation :  but  I  could 
not  and  would  not  publish  them.  They  were 
certain  to  increase  the  already  intense  English 
hatred  of  Ireland,  and  I  would  not  be  a  party  to 
feeding  that  foul  flame.  At  the  same  time  I 
wanted  to  keep  Kipling  as  a  contributor  and  did 
not  wish  him  to  feel  that  I  was  out  of  sympathy 
with  his  talent.  When  I  had  read  the  screed 
through,  I  said: 

"The  Times  should  publish  this.  If  you're 
willing,  Kipling,  Til  read  the  verses  to  Walter, 

48 


the  owner,  who's  a  friend  of  mine  and  dines 
with  me  this  week.  I'm  sure  he'll  jump  at  them, 
and  in  The  Times  they  will  make  your  name  in 
London." 

Kipling  thanked  me,  said  there  was  nothing 
he'd  like  better. 

"I  find  myself  agreeing  with  The  Times," 
he  added,  "in  almost  everything." 

I  smiled  inwardly  at  the  idea  of  any  one  being 
proud  of  agreeing  with  The  Times;  but  I  needed 
no  telling  that  such  a  common  ground  of  feel- 
ing made  it  almost  certain  that  Kipling  would 
ultimately  reach  a  world-wide  popularity. 

There  were  some  careless,  slipshod  lines  in  the 
poem ;  I,  therefore,  threw  the  manuscript  across 
the  table  to  Verschoyle.  Though  Irish  born  and 
bred,  Verschoyle  was  of  the  English  garrison  in 
Ireland  and  hated  Parnell  and  his  Nationalist 
following  as  only  an  Irishman  can  hate.  The 
sentiment  of  Kipling's  verses  appealed  to  him 
intensely,  but  he  agreed  about  the  weak  lines, 
and  with  all  courtesy  suggested  improvements. 
Kipling  lit  up  immediately,  admitted  this  word, 
rejected  that  cadence  and  argued  about  another. 
I  sat  back  and  enjoyed  the  play  of  wits.  Any 
one  who  heard  the  discussion  would  have  had  to 
admit  that  Verschoyle  was  a  considerably  better 
technician  than  Kipling,  possessing  besides  a  far 
wider  knowledge  of  English  poetry,  and  the  best 
Enelish  usage.    Yet  I  have  po  wjsb  Id  disguise 


!;■■> 

f   i 


the  undoubted  fact  that  Kipling  has  written 
better  English  poetry  than  Verschoyle  ever  wrote 
or  could  write.  I  tell  the  story  merely  in  order 
to  show  that  Kipling's  technical  gift  as  a  singer 
is  anything  but  first  rate;  his  prose,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  of  high  quality. 

For  a  long  time  I  had  most  pleasant,  if  never 
intimate,  relations  with  Kipling.  When  Buckle, 
the  utterly  incompetent  Editor  of  The  Times, 
rejected  the  poem,  Kipling  sent  it  to  Henley, 
and  it  duly  appeared  in  the  Scot's  Observer  and 
created,  as  I  had  expected,  an  extraordinary  sen- 
sation. One  peculiar  point  about  the  matter  is, 
that  the  verses  as  printed  in  the  Observer  were 
afterwards  reprinted  in  The  Times. 

As  a  man  of  the  world  Kipling  understood 
that  The  Fortnightly  Review  had  certain  Radi- 
cal traditions  and  leanings,  which  made  it  diffi- 
cult for  me  to  publish  an  anti-nationalist  poem. 
He  let  my  refusal  make  no  change  in  the  cor- 
diality of  our  intercourse.  But  the  whole  dis- 
cussion showed  me  the  very  texture,  so  to  speak, 
of  Kipling's  mind.  He  was  intensely  eager  to 
get  the  most  forcible,  or  most  picturesque,  or 
most  musical  expression  for  his  passionate 
prejudices;  he  was  fair-minded  too  in  accepting 
any  and  every  good  suggestion  or  emendation; 
but  he  was  not  willing  even  to  consider  the  op- 
posite side  of  the  question.  His  mind  seemed 
closed  to  any  argument.    He  appeared  to  have 

50 


no  understanding  of  the  fact  that  in  any  great 
dispute  the  partisan  is  almost  certainly  at  fault, 
the  only  way  of  growth  being  to  extract  the 
opposing  truths  and  unite  them  in  a  higher  syn- 
thesis which  should  include  both.  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling was  proud  of  being  a  partisan,  proud  of 
holding  and  asserting  the  English  view  of  every 
question.  Nine  times  out  of  ten  he  even  pre- 
ferred the  Tory  English  view  to  the  Liberal. 

One  day  I  spoke  bitterly  of  the  exploitation 
of  the  poor  by  the  powerful  in  Great  Britain. 
It  did  not  seem  to  interest  him. 

On  another  occasion  I  exposed  the  partiality 
of  some  English  judge,  who  was  evidently  de- 
fending the  oligarchy  against  the  people's  inter- 
ests. Kipling  assured  me  that  English  judges 
were  notoriously  the  fairest  in  the  world :  "were 
they  not  the  best  paid?"  He  had  the  prejudices 
and  opinions  of  a  fourth-form  English  school- 
boy on  almost  every  subject  coupled  with  an  ex- 
traordinary verbal  talent:  the  mind  of  a  boy  of 
sixteen  with  a  genius  for  expression. 

I  came  to  this  conclusion  through  dozens  of 
conversations:  several  times  we  stayed  arguing 
in  the  office  till  it  was  time  to  close,  and  then  I 
went  with  him  to  his  rooms  or  he  came  with  me. 

Alike  with  word  of  mouth  as  with  pen,  Kip- 
ling was  a  most  admirable  story-teller.  I  re- 
member one  evening  going  to  his  room  some- 
where off  the  Strand,  and  while  I  filled  the  soli- 

51 


tary  armchair  he  sat  on  the  bed  smoking  a  pipe 
and  told  me  how  he  had  once  witnessed  a  suc- 
cession of  wild-beast  fights  staged  by  some  In- 
dian prince.  He  pictured  the  fight  between 
a  tiger  and  a  buffalo  with  photographic  vision. 
You  saw  the  great  cat  flattened  out  on  the  arena 
while  the  buffalo  with  lowered  head  and  side- 
long eyes  moved  nearer  and  nearer.  Suddenly 
the  flaming  beast  shot  through  the  air,  but  was 
met  fairly  by  the  buffalo's  iron  front  and  horns 
and  flung  bodily  yards  away  to  the  side  and  rear ; 
like  a  flash  it  sprang  again  and  again  was  met 
and  thrown.  At  once  it  fled  to  the  wooden  wall 
and  began  licking  its  wounds.  In  spite  of  long 
red  gashes  on  his  head  and  neck  the  buffalo  was 
always  the  aggressor;  nearer  and  nearer  he  went, 
while  the  tiger  drew  itself  together,  every  hair 
on  end,  and  struck  fiercely  at  his  head,  with  one 
paw  laying  the  bone  bare  in  long  parallel  slashes 
and  ripping  off  part  of  the  nose;  the  next  mo- 
ment the  buffalo  had  nailed  the  tiger  to  the  bar- 
rier with  one  horn  and  kept  on  butting  and 
kneading  the  writhing  beast  against  the  wood 
till  one  heard  the  hooped  ribs  crack  while  the 
whole  structure  shook.  The  tiger  bit  and  clawed 
as  long  as  life  lasted,  and  when  finally  the  buf- 
falo, bellowing  with  rage,  drew  off  from  the 
dead  mat,  his  head  was  one  dripping  scarlet 
wound ;  he  had  to  be  shot. 

The  gift  of  swift  narration  and  painting  word 

S2 


was  Kipling's  as  it  was  O.  Henry's;  but  he 
hadn't  even  O.  Henry's  power  of  self-criticism. 
In  an  admirably  vigorous  and  interesting  story: 
"The  Drums  of  the  Fore  and  Aft,"  he  tells  how 
a  British  force,  having  hemmed  in  a  band  of 
Afghans,  drove  them  hither  and  thither,  attack- 
ing first  from  this  side,  then  from  that.  The 
Afghan  force,  he  said,  appeared  to  be  slowly 
melting  away,  chased,  now  here,  now  there,  as  a 
"hand  chases  a  sponge  in  a  bath."  A  moment's 
thought  would  have  told  him  that  the  phrase 
should  be  as  a  "hand  chases  soap  in  a  bath";  but 
he  did  not  correct  his  prose  very  carefully. 

Our  disagreement  went  far  deeper  than 
words,  though  our  companionship  for  some  time 
was  very  pleasant  at  least  to  me.  Bit  by  bit  I 
came  to  see  that  he  had  told  me  all  about  India 
he  had  to  tell :  he  began  to  repeat  himself,  and 
even  report  cantonment  and  clubhouse  stories, 
giving  me  the  rinsings  of  his  Indian  experiences. 
He  always  assumed  that  the  English  rule  was 
the  best  thing  that  had  happened  to  India:  the 
Pax  Britannica  held  to  peace  a  score  of  warring 
races  and  conflicting  religions.  To  ask  him 
whether  it  had  not  resulted  in  the  enslavement 
and  impoverishment  of  millions  of  the  poorest 
was  to  excite  surprise.  He  had  never  considered 
that  side  of  the  matter:  The  English  had  given 
railways  to  India:  was  the  sufl5cient  answer. 

I  wanted  to  know  how  far  Indian  thought  had 
53 


pierced,  whether  any  Buddhist  had  gone  beyond 
Gautama,  whether  any  new  and  fruitful  general- 
ization had  come  from  Hindu  thinkers,  whether 
any  Yogi  or  holy  man  had  ever  planted  his  lan- 
tern out  into  the  uncharted  darkness?  Nothing 
of  any  moment  could  I  get  from  Kipling,  no 
illuminating  word.  I  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  he  took  but  little  interest  in  new  ideas. 

One  evening  in  the  office  he  told  us  an  excel- 
lent story:  it  was  published  later  and  my  readers 
may  recognize  it.  He  started  by  picturing  a 
man  and  a  woman  riding  up  a  mountain  road 
under  the  deodars  near  Simla.  The  man  was  try- 
ing to  persuade  the  woman  to  leave  her  husband 
and  run  away  with  him.  He  proved  to  his  own 
satisfaction  that  the  woman's  husband  did  not 
love  her,  and  declared  that  his  love  for  her  was 
infinite  and  eternal.  The  woman  replied  that 
a  man's  love  usually  died  with  possession  and 
that  it  was  hardly  worth  while  to  throw  over 
convention  and  outrage  public  opinion  when 
one  had  no  certainty  of  lasting  afifection,  and  so 
forth  and  so  on.  The  story  was  made  lifelike 
and  entrancing  by  the  art  of  the  narrator,  for 
there  was  no  new  argument  used,  no  deep  reali- 
zation of  character — superficial  snapshots  mere- 
ly, cleverly  brought  out.  In  the  middle  of  the 
discussion,  an  Indian  with  a  bullock-team  and 
huge  balk  of  timber,  came  into  sight  round  a 
bend  of  the  road.    The  man's  pony  shied  at  the 

54 


apparition  and  slid  a  hind  leg  over  the  edge  of 
the  precipice:  the  woman,  seeing  the  danger, 
snatched  at  the  man's  rein  and  hit  his  pony  on 
the  nose.  At  once  pony  and  wooer  disappeared 
into  the  abyss.    And  there  the  story  ended. 

This  conclusion  seemed  to  me  silly — indefens- 
ible, a  sin  against  all  the  canons.  To  end  a  psy- 
chological discussion  by  a  brutal  accident  was 
an  insult  to  the  intelligence. 

"Why?"  countered  Kipling,  "accidents  do 
happen  in  life." 

"True,"  I  replied,  "but  they  are  rare.  If  you 
were  writing  a  whole  life  you  might  want  an 
accident  in  it  to  fulfil  the  laws  of  probability — 
but  an  accident,  and  a  fatal  accident  at  that,  is 
not  likely  to  take  place  in  a  wooing  of  ten  min- 
utes. It  is  too  improbable,  and  in  art  the  im- 
probable is  worse  than  the  impossible.    It  shocks 


me." 


"I  see  the  Indian,"  he  replied,  a  remark  which 
closed  the  discussion. 

The  more  I  thought  over  the  argument,  the 
more  indifferent  to  him  I  became.  I  saw  that 
the  man  was  all  of  one  piece,  that  beyond  his 
talent  of  expression  he  had  nothing  to  give;  my 
interest  in  him  withered  away  at  the  root. 

But,  after  all,  why  should  I  quarrel  with  Kip- 
ling or  scorn  him  for  what  he  is  not,  instead  of 
pointing  out  what  he  is  and  what  he  has  given 
to  deserve  our  gratitude.    Walter  Scott's  stories 

55 


arc  not  from  the  depths  of  thought  nor  do  his 
songs  bring  men  to  ^'sympathy  with  hopes  and 
fears  they  heeded  not."  And  yet  his  books  have 
proved  the  joy  of  many  a  young  life,  and  not 
one  reader  in  ten  thousand  has  even  heard  of  the 
shameful  book  in  which,  out  of  mistaken  patriot- 
ism, he  traduced  and  caricatured  the  great 
Napoleon.  Thank  God!  it  is  not  the  evil  but 
the  good  men  do,  that  lives  after  them,  and  it  be- 
comes one  better  therefore  to  praise  than  to 
blame.  At  the  same  time  it  is  well  to  remember 
that  it  is  just  the  want  of  thought  in  Scott,  the 
want  of  self-criticism,  what  Rossetti  used  to  call 
"the  fundamental  brain  stuff,"  that  prevents  him 
from  ranking  with  the  greatest,  with  Cervantes 
and  Balzac  and  Shakespeare.  And  it  is  the  same 
defect  that  forbids  us  to  put  Kipling  among  the 
choice  and  master  spirits  of  this  age.  I  have 
read  everything  he  has  written  since,  and  have 
found  no  reason  to  modify  my  judgment.  "Kim" 
and  "The  Jungle  Book"  are  better  than  any  of 
his  earlier  stories,  save  only  "The  Man  Who 
Would  Be  King."  The  jungle  books  in  especial 
seems  to  me  the  best  thing  Kipling  has  ever  done 
or  is  ever  likely  to  do:  but  I  get  more  of  the 
soul  of  India  from  the  native  writers. 

His  poetry  is  even  easier  to  judge.  "On  the 
Road  to  Mandalay"  and  a  chance  verse  from 
time  to  time  remain  in  the  mind  and  enrich  the 
memory;  but  Kipling's  poetic  gift  is  neither  high 

56 


nor  rare,  save  in  the  intensity  of  patriotic  appeal. 
Such  verses  as: 

"I  am  the  land  of  their  fathers, 
In  me  the  virtue  stays; 
I  will  bring  back  my  children 
After  certain  days. 

"Till  I  make  plain  the  meaning 
Of  all  my  thousand  years — 
Till  I  fill  their  hearts  with  knowledge, 
While  I  fill  their  eyes  with  tears." 

and  especially  this :  ^ 

"Take  of  English  earth  as  much 
As  either  hand  may  rightly  clutch 
In  the  taking  of  it  breathe 
Prayer  for  all  who  lie  beneath — 
Lay  that  earth  upon  your  heart 
And  your  sickness  shall  depart!" 

can  hardly  be  read  by  any  one  of  English  birth, 
without  profound  emotion:  it  thrills  all  those 
who  use  our  English  speech:  yet  patriotism  as 
a  creed  no  longer  holds  the  place  it  once  held, 
and  as  a  sentiment  even,  its  dangers  are  becom- 
ing more  and  more  obvious. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  world-war  is  a  fearsome 
object  lesson  in  the  evils  of  undue  love  of  coun- 
try: a  dozen  nations  fighting  savagely — ^what 

57 


for?  Because  every  man  overrates  national  in- 
terests, regarding  them  as  uniquely  important. 
National  self-centeredness,  national  pride — the 
cause  of  this  insane  butchery!  Long  ago  in  the 
best  minds  and  hearts,  love  of  country  has  been 
pushed  into  a  secondary  place  by  the  love  of 
humanity.  Now  the  masses  have  been  taught 
the  same  lesson  by  awful  bloodshed  and  loss. 

But  the  question  now  before  us  is:  how  far 
Kipling's  patriotism  is  laudable  and  how  it  has 
affected  his  work?  I  believe  that  again  and 
again  it  has  injured  it  and  must  finally  impair 
his  influence. 

Kipling's  parochialism  and  its  distorting 
effect  can  best  be  realized  by  us  in  the  picture 
he  drew  of  America.  Not  Dickens,  not  even 
Antony  Trollope  at  his  worst  reached  such  per- 
versity of  judgment,  such  immoral  obliquity  of 
vision.  He  lands  in  San  Francisco  and  with  in- 
credible cocksureness  uses  at  once  his  Cockney 
yardstick  as  a  measure. 

"San  Francisco  is  a  mad  city — inhabited  for 
the  most  part  by  insane  people  whose  women 
are  of  a  remarkable  beauty." 

And  his  notion  of  sanity  and  insanity  may  be 
gauged  by  the  talk  on  the  Queen's  birthday 
which  he  quotes  with  approval.  He  makes  an 
American  say  that  England  "is  beginning  to  rot 
now,"  because  it  is  "putting  power  into  the  hands 
of  the  untrained  people."    The  government  of 

58 


the  English  obligarchy  seems  to  Kipling  per- 
fect, but  any  attempts  at  democracy,  such  as 
County  Councils  even,  are  a  symptom  of  de- 
cadence and  dry  rot.    Here  is  another  judgment: 

"The  American  has  no  language.  He  has 
dialect,  slang,  provincialism,  accent,  and  so 
forth.  Now  that  I  have  heard  their  voices  all 
the  beauty  of  Bret  Harte  is  being  ruined  for  me." 

And  he  does  not  object  merely  to  our  voices 
but  to  our  clothes,  and  of  course  "the  habit  of 
spitting"  which  he  finds  on  all  sides. 

Moreover,  men  carry  revolvers  in  the  West 
and  sometimes  use  them.  He  concludes  there- 
fore: "there  is  neither  chivalry  nor  romance  in 
the  weapon  for  all  that  American  authors  have 
seen  fit  to  write.  I  would  I  could  make  you 
understand  the  full  measure  of  contempt  with 
which  certain  aspects  of  Western  life  have  in- 
spired me." 

And,  finally,  we  praise  ourselves  in  public 
speeches  and  he  can't  imagine  how  a  self-respect- 
ing man,  "a  sahib  of  our  blood  can  stand  up  and 
plaster  praise  on  his  own  country." 

Yet  Kipling  tells  us  in  "Stalky  &  Co."  that 
"India's  full  of  Stalkies — Cheltenham  and 
Marlborough  chaps — that  we  don't  know  any- 
thing about,  and  the  surprises  will  begin  when 
there  is  a  really  big  row  on." 

Well,  there  was  soon  a  big  row  on  and  the  sur- 
prises were  there  all  right.    We  were  surprised 

59 


when  a  couple  of  thousand  (or  was  it  a  couple 
of  hundred)  British  marines  were  landed  to  hold 
Antwerp  against  two  hundred  thousand  Ger- 
mans; we  were  surprised  at  Gallipoli,  and  again 
at  Salonica  and  at  Cambray.  All  such  fan- 
tastic misjudgings — blame  and  praise  alike — 
might  be  forgiven  to  Kipling's  youth;  were  it 
not  that  his  myopia  increases  with  age. 

A  great  part  of  Kipling's  popularity  and  con- 
sequent quick  rise  to  wealth  and  influence  are 
due  directly  to  his  passionate,  blind  herd-feeling. 
No  high  thought  would  have  helped  him  as 
much  as  the  general  prejudice.  It  was  probably 
the  popular  applause  which  confirmed  him  in  his 
error.  He  is  serious  when  he  writes  of  "The 
White  Man's  Burden,"  though  he  knows  as  well 
as  any  one  that  the  white  man  makes  himself  a 
burden  to  his  black  brother  out  of  the  lowest 
motives.  Again  and  again,  too,  he  has  written 
of  Russia  as  the  enemy  of  England  and  he  did 
not  hesitate  in  the  story  entitled  "The  Man  Who 
Was"  to  try  to  stir  up  ill-feeling  between  Eng- 
lishmen and  Russians  without  any  excuse.  In 
this  same  tale,  some  British  officers  at  mess  on 
the  Northwest  frontier  of  India  drink  the  usual 
toast,  "The  Queen,"  and  Kipling  pictures  them 
as  weeping  with  emotion.  At  its  best,  patriotism 
is  a  pride  founded  on  the  great  deeds  of  a  nation, 
and  at  its  most  idiotic,  it  sheds  tears  for  symbols 
questionable  if  not  unworthy. 

60 


in  the  present  world-war  Kipling  has  won  an 
evil  pre-eminence  by  vilifying  Germany  in 
every  way.  He  was  not  ashamed  to  write  of 
Germans  as  a  disease-germ,  which  if  "suffered 
to  multiply  means  death  or  loss  to  mankind. 
.  .  .  The  German  is  typhoid  or  plague — 
Pestis  Teutonicus:  ...  at  the  end  of  the 
war,"  he  declared,  "there  must  be  no  more 
Germans." 

The  mind  balks  at  such  extravagance  of 
hatred :  one  cries  for  that  quiet  shore — 

Where  the  Rudyards  cease  from  Kipling 

And  the  Haggards  Ride  no  more. 

Let  us  go  to  the  true  master  spirits  and  see 
what  they  think  of  patriotism. 

In  his  essay  on  "Honour  and  Reputation," 
Bacon  gives  us  his  view  of  the  hierarchy  of  hu- 
man achievement.  The  greatest  men,  he  tells 
us,  are  the  founders  of  States;  then  come  the 
saviours  of  States,  then  the  enlargers  of  States; 
then  lawgivers,  statesmen  and  so  forth.  Bacon, 
with  his  Latin  scholarship,  regarded  patriotism 
as  the  supreme  virtue. 

Shakespeare,  I  believe,  was  the  very  first  man 
to  outgrow  patriotism  and  realize  its  insuffi- 
cience;  his  Alcibiades  tells  us: 

'Tis  honor  with  most  lands  to  be  at  odds. 

Shakespeare  was  naturally  the  first  writer  to 
speak  of  "humanity."    He  was  not  thinking  of 

61 


the   Roman  Antony  but  of   himself  when   he 
wrote : 

".    .    .A  rarer  spirit  never 
Did  steer  humanity;   ..." 

And  this  mere  statement  has  flagged  the  com- 
ing of  a  new  ideal  into  life  or  rather  in  some 
degree  created  the  new  ideal.  For  we  all  see 
now  that  humanity  is  the  ideal,  that  patriotism 
as  a  virtue  has  been  to  some  extent  superseded ; 
"Where  it's  well  with  me — there's  my  father- 
land," says  the  Latin  proverb.  An  undue  love 
or  preference  of  one  nation  or  race  is  as  absurd 
in  thought  as  it  is  dangerous  in  fact 

Goethe  took  this  view  very  emphatically. 
His  words  to-day  are  worth  recalling:  "I  am 
blamed,"  he  said,  "because  I  do  not  dislike  the 
French  and  take  sides  against  them ;  but  how  can 
I  dislike  the  French  when  I  owe  them  a  great 
part  of  my  intellectual  being?" 

In  this  modern  dispute,  Kipling  is  plainly  on 
the  wrong  side:  even  England  will  yet  have  to 
learn  that  Shaw  is  a  nobler  figure  and  a  better 
patriot  besides.  What  does  Walter  Scott's  hatred 
of  Napoleon  count  for  to-day?  It  merely  excites 
a  shrug  of  contemptuous  pity. 

Kipling^s  dislike  of  the  United  States  and 
Russia  and  now  of  Germany  is  even  less  excus- 
able; it  is  indeed  nothing  but  English  "strach- 
ery" — the  sour  reaction  of  inferior  vitality  or 
virtue  masquerading  as  moral  condemnation. 

62 


Only  the  other  day  Kipling  lamented  his  ig- 
norance of  French;  but  it  is  his  ignorance  of 
Russian  and  especially  of  German  that  I  deplore. 
If  he  knew  Goethe  and  Heine,  Lessing  and 
Schopenhauer,  he  could  never  have  soiled  his 
pages  with  such  abominable  nonsense  about  the 
great  German  people  as  I  have  quoted.  It  is 
his  ignorance,  his  want  of  education  that  dwarfs 
him  and  maims  his  gift  to  humanity. 

It  is  impossible  for  me  to  part  from  Kipling 
on  this  note ;  he  has  interested  us  so  often,  given 
us  so  much  pleasure;  dazzled  us  with  such  bril- 
liant pictures  that  we  are  all  perforce  his  debtors 
and  grateful.  When  his  name  comes  up  it  is  not 
his  English  provincialism  we  recall,  but  the 
pulsing  life  on  the  great  Indian  highroad  in 
"Kim,"  or  the  magic  verses: — 

"Ship  me  somewhere  East  of  Suez, 
Where  the  best  is  like  the  worst. 
Where  there  aren't  no  ten  commandments 
And  a  man  may  raise  a  thirst. 

"Ah,  it's  there  that  I  would  be 
By  the  old  Moulmcin  pagoda 
Looking  lazy  at  the  sea." 


63 


ERNEST  DOWSON: 
THE  SWAN-SONG  OF  YOUTH. 

"Mother  of  God;  O  Misericord,  look  down  in  pity  on  us. 
The  weak  and  the  blind  who  stand  in  our  light  and  wreak  our- 
•elvei  such  ill." 

HATEVER  we  want  in  life,  what- 
ever we  desire  intensely  and  with 
persistence,  we  are  sure  to  obtain. 

"All  our  youthful  prayers  are 
granted,"  says  Goethe:  "brimming 
measure  in  maturity."  That  is  the  chief  lesson 
of  life:  You  can  mold  it  to  what  form  you  will, 
get  from  it  what  you  wish :  Knock  and  it  shall  be 
opened  unto  you.  Ask  and  ye  shall  have.  You 
can  make  it  hymn  or  epic,  as  you  please,  get  joy 
from  it,  or  sorrow  or  love,  or  fame — greatness 
of  soul  or  fatness  of  purse — whatever  you  will ;  if 
you  only  will  it  with  all  your  might  to  the  end. 
That's  almost  the  same  as  saying  that  life  gives 
herself  to  the  strong  only:  for  they  alone  can 
will  steadfastly;  but  what  of  the  weak?  What 
of  those  who  dream  rather  than  desire  and  whose 
dreams  arc  fitful  and  faint?  Sometimes  life 
grants  even  to  these  the  triumph  of  a  moment, 
the  ecstasy  of  achievement,  when  they  have 
dreamed  beautiful  things  and  loved  them  with 
intense  passion. 
I  can't  remember  who  introduced  me  to  Ernest 
•      64 


^m 


Ernest  Dowson 


Dowson  or  where  we  first  met;  but  I  knew  him 
from  about  1890  up  to  the  end  of  his  brief  life. 

Dowson  was  born,  I  think,  in  1867  and  died 
about  1900.  He  was  physically  weak  and  slight 
though  of  good  height;  he  had  not  stuff  enough 
in  him,  I  thought  at  first,  to  be  great;  yet  in 
various  ways  he  interested  me  intensely.  He  was 
very  like  Keats  without  Keats's  strength  or  joy 
in  life;  a  fragile,  scholarly  Keats.  On  first  ac- 
quaintance shy ;  yet  impulsive  and  frank  with  a 
singular  charm  of  manner;  he  appealed  to  the 
heart  as  some  girls  do  with  a  child's  confidence 
and  a  child's  hesitancy  and  a  sort  of  awkward 
unexpected  grace,  quite  indescribable.  He  was 
gentle  too  and  gay  with  quaint  quirks  of  verse, 
unprintable  often,  amusing  always — a  delight- 
ful companion,  quick-changing  as  an  April  day. 

His  portrait  by  Rothenstein  is  an  extraordi- 
narily perfect  likeness;  for  once  the  artist  has 
been  able  to  reproduce  the  features  and  convey 
too  the  elusive  charm  and  sad,  sincere  appeal  of 
an  ingenuous,  delightful  spirit. 

When  I  first  knew  Dowson  he  made  the  im- 
pression of  peculiar  refinement;  he  was  sensi- 
tive to  all  courtesies,  vibrant  with  enthusiasms, 
yet  instinctively  considerate.  I  was  always  glad 
to  meet  him,  though  I  held  his  talent  lightly; 
his  early  verses  being  for  the  most  part  echoes 
of  Verlaine  and  Swinburne,  and  nothing  so  re- 

65 


pels  me  as  the  "sedulous  ape"  faculty,  imitation 
— the  hallmark  of  mediocrity. 

I  went  with  him  one  evening  into  a  little  bar 
off  Leicester  Square  and  he  recited  I  remember, 
a  translation  of  a  verse  of  Verlaine. 

I  had  to  tell  him  that  while  the  ineffable  sad- 
ness of  the  verse  was  characteristic  of  Verlaine, 
the  translation  was  rather  poor. 

"So  was  the  price  paid  for  it,"  he  laughed,  "a 
measly  ten  shillings.  What  can  you  expect  for 
that?"  He  spoke  disdainfully,  yet  not  from 
greed.  He  thought  his  work  good  enough  to 
deserve  high  pay.  He  was  not  needy,  he  always 
seemed  to  be  able  to  live  decently  without  work ; 
he  had  good  connections,  properties  even,  was 
never  really  in  want,  but  he  struck  me  as  care- 
less of  money  and  improvident  to  an  extraor- 
dinary degree. 

I  was  away  from  London  for  a  year  or  two 
and  Dowson  was  much  in  France  and  when  we 
next  met,  he  had  changed.  There  was  a  spring 
of  life  in  him,  of  hope  and  purpose  I  had  not 
seen  before.  He  confessed  to  me  that  he  was  in 
love  with  a  French  girl  whose  mother  kept  a 
small  restaurant  in  Soho;  he  took  me  round  to 
see  her.  I  could  find  little  attraction  in  her  ex- 
cept the  beauty  of  youth  and  the  fact  that  she 
evidently  didn't  care  much  for  Dowson — a  girl- 
ish, matter-of-fact,  pleasant  creature.  I  could 
not  believe  that  the  fever  would  be  lasting  or 
profound.    I  was  mistaken, 

66  ■ 


One  day  he  drifted  into  lunch  and  revealed 
himself  more  boldly.  We  talked  of  literature 
and  he  seemed  to  like  everything  second  rate  in 
it,  I  thought:  he  loved  Horace  and  any  curious, 
arresting  epithet  pleased  him  beyond  measure. 
I  said  something  about  "eventful  originality" 
and  he  jumped  up  and  clapped  his  hands  and 
crov^^ed  w^ith  delight,  repeating  again  and  again 
"eventful  ....  eventful  originality,"  Wc 
went  out  for  a  stroll  into  Hyde  Park,  and  as  we 
walked  he  compared  himself  with  Poe :  "a  mas- 
ter of  both  prose  and  verse  ....  his  prose 
better  than  his  verse,  as  mine  is — "  I  laughed : 
I  thought  (God  forgive  me  I)  he  was  overrating 
himself,  measuring  stature  with  Poe.  I  quoted  a 
verse  of  Annabel  Lee  to  recall  him  to  himself. 
He  praised  it  laughing  joyously  in  his  odd  boy- 
ish way  and  then  said  half  shyly :  "I've  written 
some  verses  I  like  ....   rather." 

"Let  me  hear  them,"  I  cried,  and  he  stopped 
and  began  as  if  to  encourage  himself,  "I  call  it: 
'Sapientia  Lunae,' "  and  he  translated:  "The 
Wisdom  of  the  Moon."  A  pause :  he  twisted  his 
thin  hands  together  and  began: 

"The  wisdom  of  the  world  said  unto  me: 
'Go  forth  and  run,  the  race  is  to  the  Ibrave; 

Perchance  some  honor  tarrieth  for  thee!* 
'As  tarrieth,'  I  said,  'for  sure,  the  grave.* 

For  I  had  pondered  on  a  rune  of  roses, 

Which  to  her  votaries  the  moon  discloses.** 

67 


I  can  still  sec  the  slight,  stooping  figure  and 
the  liquid,  appealing  eyes — framed,  so  to  speak, 
by  a  bed  of  crimson  flowers: 

"Perchance  some  honor  tarrieth  for  thee!" 

The  lure  of  all  poets,  of  all  nympholepts  of 
the  ideal.  .  .  .  Again  the  pleasing  pathetic 
tenor  voice: 

"Then  said  my  voice:  "Wherefore  strive  or  run 

On  dusty  highways  ever,  a  vain  race? 
The  long  night  cometh,  starless,  void  of  sun, 

What  light  shall  serve  thee  like  her  golden  face? 
For  I  had  pondered  on  a  rune  of  roses, 
And  knew  some  secrets  which  the  moon  discloses." 

I  can't  give  reasons  but  the  poem  struck  me — 
"her  golden  face";  Dowson's  manner;  the  sing- 
ing verses,  above  all  the  pathos,  the  passion  of 
his  love,  trembling,  yet  controlled  in  the  slow 
music,  deepened  the  appeal,  lifted  the  poem  to 
greatness. 

"Why,  Dowson,"  I  exclaimed,  "love  has  made 
a  poet  of  you!    That's  first  rate — a  new  note." 

He  half  smiled  and  then  walked  on  flushed — 
pensive : — "Love — love  ....  makes  poets  of 
us  all,"  he  said  as  if  to  himself.  We  spent  the 
afternoon  and  evening  together,  dining  at  the 
Cafe  Royal.  I  was  astonished  by  his  range  of 
reading  and  his  intimacy  with  the  Latins,  espec- 
ially Propertius;  he  was  saturated  too  in  French 
and  Italian  poetry  and  had  modern  English 
verse  at  his  tongue's  tip.    About  ten  o'clock  he 

68 


grew  silent;  he  wished  to  go  round  to  his  French 
restaurant,  he  said,  and  I  let  him  go,  for  I  was 
a  little  tired  of  hearing  him  praise  Mallarme 
and  Verlaine,  extravagantly,  as  I  thought. 

A  little  later  we  met  again  and  spent  a  sunny 
morning  together,  lunched  and  talked  the  sun 
down  the  sky:  poetry  of  course  and  metaphysics. 
He  would  not  have  my  American  optimism, 
shrugged  his  shoulders  at  my  idea  of  the  King- 
dom of  Man  upon  earth  and  a  new  Jerusalem 
to  be  builded  on  Seine  or  Thames  or  Hudson- 
side  : — 

Our  world  is  young, 
Young,   and  of  measure  passing  bound, 
Infinite  are  the  heights  to  climb 
The  depths  to  sound. 

"I  am  for  the  old  faith,"  he  broke  in;  "I've 
become  a  Catholic  as  every  artist  must.  Have 
you  heard  this? — 

"  'Upon  the  eyes,  the  lips,  the  feet, 
On  all  the  passages  of  sense. 
The  atoning  oil  is  spread  with  sweet 
Renewal  of  lost  innocence.'  " 

With  a  gasp  of  surprise  I  recognized  that  he 
had  become  a  master  of  his  instrument;  the 
mounting  music  of  the  last  couplet  is  super- 
excellent. 

I  didn't  see  him  again  for  a  couple  of  years 
and  then  he  was  with  Smithers,  I  think,  when 
we  met    Dowson  had  changed  greatly:  youth 

69 


and  youth's  enthusiasms,  the  lively  quick  changes 
of  mood  had  died  out  of  him;  he  was  serious, 
disdainful;  his  clothes  seemed  threadbare  and 
unbrushed;  he  met  me  with  petulant  indiffer- 
ence; a  touch  of  resentment,  I  thought.  Had  T 
omitted  some  courtesy?  or  was  I  one  of  the  many 
heedless  and  profane  who  should  have  known 
and  helped  him  and  did  not?  I  wondered  re- 
gretfully. 

The  second  or  third  time  I  saw  him  he  was 
drunk,  helplessly,  hopelessly  drunk — and  wore 
— "I  don't  care" — as  a  mask.  And  soon,  it  seems 
to  me  in  retrospect,  the  drinking  Dowson  ob- 
scured for  me  much  of  the  charm  of  the  younger 
Dowson.  Often  he  was  delightful  at  first  when 
we  met;  yet  always  eager  to  drink  and  to  get 
drunk,  eager  to  throw  away  his  hold  on  life  and 
sanity, — to  drown  the  bitter  stings  of  remem- 
brance. I  soon  found  out  that  his  love  had 
jilted  him:  "chucked  him  for  a  waiter,"  said 
Smithers  grinning.  Though  not  so  deep  as  a 
drawwell,  nor  broad  as  a  church  door,  as  Mer- 
cutio  said,  the  wound  served,  and  Dowson  died 
of  it.  After  a  couple  of  years'  courtship, — talks 
at  lunch,  games  of  cards  after  dinner,  a  kiss  or 
two,  friendly  on  one  side  and  passionate  on  the 
other,  the  illusion  of  love  returned, — s^he  mar- 
ried a  waiter,  and  Dowson  could  never  recover 
his  fragile  hold  on  life  and  hope.  Dowson's 
only  epigram  tells  the  whole  story: 

70 


Because  t  am  idolatrous  and  have  besougfit, 
With  grievous  supplication  and  consuming  prayer, 
The  admirable  image  that  my  dreams  have  wrought 
Out  of  her  swan's  neck  and  her  dark  abundant  hair: 
The  jealous  gods,  who  brook  no  worship  save  their  own. 
Turned  my  live  idol  and  her  heart  to  stone. 

I  did  not  realize  the  tragedy  on  first  hearing. 
But  a  little  while  afterwards,  we  floated  together 
again  one  afternoon  in  Coventry  Street  and 
Dowson  asked  me  to  accompany  him  to  a  dock 
he  owned  in  the  East  End.  He  seemed  pathet- 
ically weak  and  dependent  on  casual  companion- 
ship, lonely  and  unhappy. 

The  East  of  London  was  always  calling  mc  at 
that  time  as  the  East  Side  of  New  York  calls  me 
now  and  I  went  with  him.  We  dined  in  a  frowsy 
room  behind  a  bar  on  a  bare  table  without  a 
napkin:  the  food  almost  uneatable,  the  drink 
poisonous,  and  afterwards  Dowson  took  me 
round  to  places  of  amusement!  The  memory  of 
it  all, — a  nightmare;  I  can  still  hear  a  girl  dron- 
ing out  an  interminable  song  meant  to  be  lively 
and  gay;  still  see  a  woman  clog-dancing  just  to 
show  glimpses  of  old,  thin  legs,  smiling  gro- 
tesquely the  while  with  toothless  mouth;  still 
remember  Dowson  hopelessly  drunk  at  the  end 
screaming  with  rage  and  vomiting  insults — a 
wretched  experience. 

A  week  later  he  wanted  me  to  go  East  again ; 
but  I  had  had  enough.  What  the  French  call 
la  nostalgie  de  la  boue   (the  homesickness  for 

71 


squalor  and  mud-honey)  was  upon  him  and  he 
abandoned  himself  to  it. 

Once  I  remonstrated  with  him;  took  him  into 
the  Cafe  Royal  one  morning,  cheered  him  with 
excellent  coffee,  begged  him,  for  his  talent's  sake, 
to  pull  himself  together;  everything  was  still 
possible  to  him:  he  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

I  probed  him  to  know  if  money  would  help 
him:  he  laughed,  "Hope  would  help  me  and 
nothing  less."  Eager  to  rouse  him,  I  spoke  of 
him  as  a  dreamer,  a  failure.  He  reddened  and 
said:  "I've  written  things  you'd  like,  oh,  yes! 
Things  you'd  like  very  much." 

"Let  me  hear  them,"  I  cried,  "and  I'll  be- 
lieve," and  he  recited  some  verses  of  the  poem 
Impenitentia  Ultima: 
"Before  my  light  goes  out  for  ever  if  God  should  give  me 

a  choice  of  graces, 
I  would  not  reck  of  length  of  days,  nor  crave  for  things 

to  be; 
But  cry:     'One  day  of  the  great  lost  days,  one  face  of  all 

the  faces, 
Grant  me  to  see  and  touch  once  more  and  nothing  more 

to  sec- 

"  'But  once  before  the  sand  is  run  and  the  silver  thread  is 

broken 
Give  me  a  grace  and  cast  aside  the  veil  of  dolorous  years. 
Grant  me  one  hour  of  all  mine  hours,  and  let  me  sec  for  a 

token 
Her  pure  and  pitiful  eyes  shine  out,  and  bathe  her  feet 

with  tears. 


72 


"  'Before  the  ruining  waters  fall  and  my  life  be  carried 

under, 
And  Thine  anger  cleave  me  through  as  a  child  cuts  down  a 

flower, 
I  will  praise  Thee,  I^ord,  iri  Hell,  while  my  limbs  are  racked 

asunder. 
For  the  last  sad  sight  of  her  face  and  the  little  grace  of  an 

hour.'  " 

The  verses  sang  the  desire  of  his  heart,  with 
consuming  passion,  and  taught  me  all  his  love- 
madness  and  despair:  but  I  was  determined — 
hoping  it  might  spur  him  to  better  things — not 
again  to  lose  my  critical  attitude.  I  nodded  my 
head  and  said: 

"First  rate;  the  hands  are  the  hands  of  Dow- 
son  but  the  voice  is  the  voice  of  Swinburne." 

"Oh,  that  be  damned,"  he  cried,  "the  voice  is 
mine;  'my  cup  may  be  small.'  "  he  quoted,  "but 
it's  mine.'  Here's  something  to  a  madman  in 
Bedlam,"  and  he  began  reciting  again.  The  last 
couplet  caught  me,  rapt  me  out  of  time : 

".    .    .    .    ;better  than  love  or  sleep. 

The  star-crowned  solitude  of  thine  oblivious  hours!" 

It  was  Splendid ;  it  sang  itself  and  satisfied  the 
critical  faculty  in  me;  yet  there  was  better  to 
come,  I  divined.  Dowson  nodded  too  with  a 
challenge  as  of  one  sure  of  himself: 

"Here  is  my  best,"  he  said,  and  began  with  a 
voice  that  trembled  in  spite  of  himself: 

73 


"Last  night,  ah,  yesternight,  betwixt  her  lips  an<!  miruf 

There  fell  thy  shadow,  Cynara!  thy  breath  was  shed 

Upon  my  soul  between  the  kisses  and  the  wine; 

And  I  was  desolate  and  sick  of  an  old  passion. 

Yea,  I  was  desolate  and  bowed  my  head: 

I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara!  in  my  fashion. 

"I  have  forgot  much,  Cynara!  gone  with  the  wind, 

Flung  roses,  roses  riotously  with  the  throng 

Dancing,  to  put  thy  pale,  lost  lilies  out  of  mind; 

But  I  was  desolate  and  sick  of  an  old  passion, 

Yea,  all  the  time,  because  the  dance  was  long: 

I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara!  in  my  fashion." 

I  could  not  help  myself:  I  was  enthralled. 
He  paused. 

"Go  on,"  I  begged,  and  he  went  on: 

"I  cried  for  madder  music  and  for  stronger  wine, 
But  when  the  feast  is  finished  and  the  lamps  expire 
Then  falls  thy  shadow,  Cynara!  the  night  is  thine; 
And  I  am  desolate  and  sick  of  an  old  passion, 
Yea,  hungry  for  the  lips  of  my  desire: 
I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara!  in  my  fashion." 

"The  greatest  poem  of  this  time,"  I  exclaimed; 
"sure  to  live;  why  should  one  be  afraid  to  say  it: 
sure  to  live  forever."  And  I  looked  at  him  with 
a  sort  of  wonder;  for  this  frail  creature  had  done 
it  before  any  of  us,  had  scaled  Heaven  and  stood 
there  throned  among  the  Immortals. 

Tears  had  been  in  his  voice  almost  from  the 
beginning.  When  I  burst  out  in  praise  of  him, 
tears  were  pouring  down  his  face  and  after  the 
last  verse  as  I  praised  him  enthusiastically,  he 
leant  his  head  on  his  hands  and  gave  the  tears 

74 


way.  When  the  fit  had  passed  and  he  had  wiped 
his  eyes  I  said,  cursing  myself  for  my  previous 
harshness : 

"No  wonder,  you  are  impenitent,  you  arc 
quite  right.  Whatever  brought  you  to  that 
height  is  good :  whatever  way  you  trod,  blessed. 
What  do  the  thorns  matter?  or  the  bowl ;  whether 
of  hyssop  or  hemlock,  who  cares?  Your  name 
is  enskied  and  sacred,  shrined  in  the  hearts  of 
men  forever  and  I  called  you  a  weak  dreamer 
and  a  failure.    Well,  your  answer  is: 

**I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara!  in  my  fashion." 

And  then  I  made  up  my  mind  to  try  to  cure 
him;  admiration  had  moved  him;  would  com- 
monsense  help  or  ridicule;  humor  or  sympathy? 
Vd  try  every  motive. 

"Fancy,"  I  began,  "that  little  French  girl  call- 
ing forth  such  a  passion  in  you!  It  astounds  me 
that  you  can't  see  her  as  she  was  and  is  with 
nothing  to  her  but  the  beauty  of  youth.  She  had 
nothing  in  her,  Dowson,  or  she'd  never  have  pre- 
ferred a  waiter  to  you." 

Dowson  looked  at  me :  "What  did  Keats  see 
in  Fanny  Brawne?" 

"But  don't  you  know,"  I  cried,  "that  you'd 
only  have  to  take  hold  of  yourself  for  a  month 
and  go  out  among  the  better  class  girls  in  Lon- 
don to  find  someone  infinitely  superior  to  her  in 
body  and  mind  and  soul ;  someone  worthy  of  you 


/> 


and  your  genius.  For  God's  sake,  man,  give  life 
a  chance  to  show  you  what  jewels  it  holds!" 

"I've  lost  the  one  pearl,"  he  said,  and  added 
dreamily:  "What's  life  good  for  but  to  be  lived 
to  the  full;  the  whole  meaning  of  it  is  in  the 
moment  when  you  reach  the  ultimate  of  feeling 
and  can  throw  life  away  as  holding  nothing 
higher.  To  me  passion  is  the  way  to  Nirvana, 
love  the  supreme  sacrament,  the  perfect  chry- 
solite— " 

"You  can  find  a  dozen  finer  gems,"  I  cried, 
"incomparably  more  lustrous,  more — " 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders  disdainfully. 
"More  to  your  taste,  I  dare  say — not  to  mine. 
Can't  you  see,"  he  burst  out  with  sudden  violence, 
"that  I  loved  her  just  because  you  and  the  others 
could  find  nothing  in  her;  no  beauty  in  her  curv- 
ing white  neck  and  the  way  the  dark  tendrils 
curled  on  it;  no  sweetness  in  the  pure  eyes  and 
mocking  gay  laughter;  nothing.  But  I  saw,  and 
knew  she  was  mine,  made  for  me  and  me  alone 
to  love  and  possess.  Can't  you  see  that  the  less 
she  was  yours,  man,  the  more  she  was  mine;  all 
mine — mine  alone;  no  one  else  could  know  her 
and  her  shy,  elusive  grace.  Ah,  God — how  did 
I  lose  her?    Why?" 

And  the  face  froze  into  despair,  wild-eyed 
with  agonizing  remorse.  His  couplet  came  into 
my  head : 

You  would  have  understood  me,  had  you  waited; 
I  could  have  loved  you,  dear,  as  well  as  he; 

76 


Suddenly  I  realized  that  there  was  nothing  to 
be  done.  A  desperate  gamester,  Dowson  had 
risked  all  on  one  throw  and  lost — and  yet  how 
easy  it  had  been  to  have  won;  how  easy;  (that 
was  the  sting) — and  how  impossible  for  himl 

Always  I  know,  how  little  severs  me 
From  mine  heart's  country,  that  is  yet  so  far; 
And  must  I  lean  and  long  across  a  bar, 
That  half  a  word  would  shatter  utterly? 

That  half-word  was  never  uttered  1 
Whenever  we  love  passionately  we  cannot 
angle  for  love;  we  can  only  pray  for  it — not  call 
it  into  being  by  cunning  or  feigned  indifference; 
we  can  only  give  royally  and  wait  in  vain — the 
tears  of  youth,  the  bitterest  tears  of  this  unintel- 
ligible world. 

Let  be  at  last:  colder  she  grows  and  colder; 

Sleep  and  the  night  were  best; 
Lying  at  last  where  we  cannot  behold  her, 

We  may  rest. 

The  pathos  of  it  all  and  the  music! 

In  other  years  Dowson  wrote  another  book 
of  verse — "Decorations" — mere  echoes;  books  of 
prose  too — some  novels  done  in  collaboration 
and  a  slight  volume  of  short  stories — "Dilem- 
mas"— which  deserve  mention  perhaps  for  a 
certain  subdued  sadness  and  careful  delicate 
workmanship — dead  rose  leaves  still  exhaling  a 
faint  sweet  perfume. 

n 


The  last  days  of  his  short  life  were  spent  main- 
ly abroad;  in  Paris  and  Brittany,  Dieppe  and 
Normandy.  In  especial  he  loved  Paris  as  many 
Englishmen  love  it  with  a  peculiar  and  passion- 
ate emotion  as  a  city  where  art  is  cherished  as 
an  ideal  higher  even  than  life,  and  it  was  from 
Paris  that  he  wrote  the  letter,  the  postscript  of 
which  I  reproduce  in  facsimile 
It  gives  a  curious  snapshot  of  life  in  Paris,  about 
1899,  a  lightning  gleam  illuminating  not  only 
Sherard  and  Rowland  Strong,  but  also  Oscar 
Wilde,  in  a  characteristic  attitude. 

Dowson's  handwriting  shows,  something  of 
the  lucidity,  the  delicacy,  the  love  of  beauty 
which  were  his  enduring  characteristics. 

/a*/    S)i>KkJUK    ^    ScJuiyraAJi    ^•*L,i.aj   a^^Wtt*    ^/fi** 
•Ta^C^    <d     Jit^tAO  —    m/H    *M  riijiXy*^  4UCa.^JL    A^^M«,c/  — -l.^. 


y 


[I  met  severally  &  separately  yesterday  after- 
noon Oscar,  Strong  &  Sherard — all  inveighing 
bitterly  against  one  another  &  two  of  them  dis- 
cussing divers  fashions  of  self-destruction,  Oscar 

78 


was  particularly  grieved  because  of  a  Swedish 
baron  (whom  he  had  met  at  Marlotte  &  of  whom 
he  hoped  much)  who  had  borrowed  5  francs 
from  him  on  the  Boulevard. 
Yours  ever, 

Ernest  Dowson. 

Usually  when  abroad  Dowson  sought  the 
slums:  "The  common  people,"  he  used  to  say, 
"everywhere  smack  of  race ;  gentle- folk  have  no 
nationality,"  and  he  loved  the  French,  indeed 
every  Latin  people.  There  was  in  him  an  un- 
complaining almost  stoical  independence  curi- 
ously akin  to  hopelessness:  for  months  at  a  time 
he  was  half-starved ;  yet  he  would  not  appeal  to 
his  relations  who  could  and  would  have  helped 
him,  still  less  to  his  friends  whose  aid  wouldTonb' 
have  been  limited  by  their  means;  for  Dowson 
had  the  gift  of  making  himself  loved  by  every 
one  save  that  once  when  love  meant  everything 
to  him. 

In  the  last  year  of  his  life  he  returned  to  Lon- 
don :  "Poverty  can  hide  in  London  better  than 
anywhere  else,"  he  often  said.  A  friend,  Robert 
Sherard,  found  him  one  day — destitute,  shabby, 
hungry  and  ill — coughing  ominously:  he  took 
him  with  him  to  a  bricklayer's  cottage  in  which 
he  himself  was  living  on  the  outskirts  of  Cat- 
ford  and  there  tended  him  in  all  love  and  pity. 

In  spite  of  the  consumption  from  which  he 
79 


was  suffering  I  can  imagine  Dowson  quite  happy 
in  this  little  haven  of  rest.  Under  his  shyness  he 
was  intensely  affectionate;  when  moved,  he  liked 
to  touch  and  caress  one  as  a  woman  does  and 
loving  kindness  and  mental  companionship  were 
what  he  most  desired  on  earth  and  most  prized. 

Like  consumptives  in  general,  Dowson  had  no 
notion  that  his  end  was  near;  he  was  often  full 
of  hope  and  always  full  of  literary  projects: 
£600  was  to  come  to  him  from  the  sale  of  some 
property,  then  he  would  make  "a  fresh  start"! 
Talking  thus  one  day,  he  leant  forward  to  cough 
with  more  ease  and  drooped  back  fainting:  he 
had  made  his  fresh  start. 

Dowson's  life  was  very  brief  and  many  would 
call  it  miserable,  but  he  gave  himself  to  love 
with  single-hearted  devotion,  and  his  passion 
brought  him  what  he  most  desired — a  place 
among  the  English  poets  forever,  immortality 
as  we  mortals  measure  it! 

"I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara !  in  ray  fashion." 

There  are  few  greater  lyrics  in  all  English 
verse:  none  more  poignant-sad. 


80 


Theodore  Dreiser 


THEODORE  DREISER 

CAME  across  "Sister  Carrie"  when 
it  was  first  published  in   England 
ten  or  twelve  years  ago  and  it  made 
a  deep  and  enduring  impression  on 
I  me.      I  sent  copies  of  it  broadcast 

to  all  my  friends  and  those  whom  I  knew  to  be 
interested  in  literature.  The  story  of  the  grad- 
ual decay  and  ruin  of  Hurstwood  seemed  to  me 
a  masterly  piece  of  work  and  I  considered  the 
book  one  of  the  modern  novels  most  likely  to  live. 

I  was  naturally  curious,  therefore,  to  meet  the 
author,  and  almost  as  soon  as  I  came  to  stay  in 
New  York  I  looked  him  up. 

Dreiser's  appearance  surprised  me;  he  seemed 
clumsy:  a  big  burly  man — he  must  be  five  feet 
ten  or  eleven  in  height  and  weigh  some  190 
pounds;  a  large  head  with  German  features.  1 
mean  by  German,  irregular,  large,  and  fleshy, 
as  if  moulded  in  putty;  the  mouth  sensuous  with 
thick  lips;  the  eyes  (the  feature  of  the  face) 
thoughtful  gray  eyes  with  a  sort  of  glance  to  the 
side  in  one  of  them  that  gives  you  the  impression 
of  a  cast  and  conveys  the  idea  of  quick  alertness 
— very  distinctive  in  a  man  whose  manner  is 
rather  heavy  and  whose  speech  is  inclined  to  be 
slow  and  impressive. 

Naturally  I  talked  with  him  both  about  his 
books  and  about  his  life,  particularly  about  the 
early  formative  years  and  the  moulding  infiu- 

81i 


enccs.  In  brief  outlines  this  is  what  he  told  me: 
He  was  brought  up  in  the  small  country  town 
of  Evansville,  Ind.,  as  a  strict  Catholic;  his 
father  was  a  Catholic  bigot;  "I  never  knew," 
he  says,  "a  narrower,  more  hide-bound  religion- 
ist nor  one  more  tender  and  loving  in  his  narrow 
way.  He  was  a  crank,  a  tenth-rate  Saint  Simon 
(sicf)  or  Francis  of  Assissi."  His  mother,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  a  "happy,  hopeful  animal;  an 
open,  uneducated,  wondering,  dreamy  mind; 
a  pagan  mother  taken  over  into  the  Catholic 
Church  at  marriage;  a  great  poet-mother  be- 
cause she  loved  fables  and  fairies  and  half  be- 
lieved in  them;  a  great-hearted  mother — loving, 
tender,  charitable.  I  always  say  I  know  how 
great  some  souls  can  be  because  I  know  how 
splendid  that  of  my  mother  was." 

The  first  books  that  made  any  impression  on 
Dreiser  were  Goldsmith's  "Deserted  Village" 
and  the  "Vicar  of  Wakefield."  They  seemed 
to  him  like  real  life.  When  he  was  almost  thir- 
teen, he  had  a  woman  teacher  at  the  public 
school  who  was  "astonishinglv  sympathetic." 
He  writes  to  her  still.  She  sujr^ested  his  reading 
Hawthorne,  Washington  Irving  and  Fenimore 
Cooper,  and  then  Thackeray,  Drvden  and  Pope. 
A  little  later  Carlvle's  "French  Revolution"  was 
a  sort  of  revelation  to  him  while  Shakespeare 
onened  a  new  world  full  of  color  and  lip^ht. 
When  he  was  about  fourteen  or  so  he  fell  in 
?.2 


love  with  a  girl  of  his  own  age,  Dora  Yaisley, 
but  was  too  shy  to  approach  her;  remembers 
being  chased  and  kissed  by  another  playmate, 
Augusta  Neuweiler,  "plump  and  pretty,  with  a 
cap  of  short  dark  ringlets  swirling  about  her 
eyes  and  ears  and  a  red  and  brown  complexion 
and  an  open,  pretty  mouth." 

At  sixteen  he  went  to  Chicago  and  worked  for 
a  hardware  company  at  $5  a  week.  He  soon  rea- 
lized with  a  horrible  depression  that  he  could 
never  be  a  successful  salesman,  which  was  at  the 
moment  the  object  of  his  ambition;  he  would 
never  get  money  enough  to  marry  and  be  happy. 

"Had  you  flirted  before  this  time?" 

"No,"  he  replied.  "I  was  more  frightened  of 
girls  than  of  lightning  and  felt  the  same  horrible 
depression  about  them  and  my  chance  of  success 
with  them  as  I  felt  in  regard  to  business.  At 
the  same  time  many  of  them  seemed  beautiful  to 
me  and  I  longed  to  have  them  like  me;  they 
formed  most  of  the  brightness  of  life.  I  remem- 
ber when  I  was  about  sixteen,  two  girls  came 
past  one  day  and  saw  me  swinging;  they  began 
to  talk  and  evidently  wanted  to  make  friends. 
I  swung  them,  too,  but  I  could  not  even  respond 
to  their  advances. 

"Another  girl,  I  remember,  put  her  arms 
round  me  one  evening  and  held  my  hands.  I 
could  not  speak;  my  heart  was  in  my  mouth;  I 
was  nearer  choking  than  kissing;  I  could  not 

»3 


believe  that  she  liked  me,  much  less  admired  me. 
I  lived  in  this  horrible  depression  till  I  was 
nearly  twenty. 

"While  working  in  the  hardware  store  I  met 
one  acquaintance  who  exercised  a  great  influence 
over  me.  He  was  a  Dane — a  drunkard  and  a 
lecher — excessively  vicious,  but  with  marvellous 
brains,  I  thought,  marvellous  ability.  He  taught 
me  a  lot  about  politics  and  statecraft  and  really 
made  me  believe  in  the  relative  crudeness  of  life 
in  Western  America  as  compared  with  Europe 
— a  thing  wholly  incredible  to  me  at  first.  He 
laughed  Christianity  off  the  boards  for  me.  Up 
to  that  time  I  had  been  a  believer,  but  he  intro- 
duced me  to  Spencer  and  Lecky  and  altogether 
widened  my  horizon  in  the  most  amazing  way. 
He  would  borrow  money  from  me  and  tell  mc 
afterwards  he  would  not  pay  me  back,  which  I 
thought  extraordinary,  but  I  forgave  him  be- 
cause he  was  so  valuable  to  me. 

"A  little  later  I  met  another  woman  teacher 
who  helped  me  on  my  upward  way  with  real 
intelligence.  She  was  a  Miss  Fielding.  She 
proposed  that  I  should  go  to  college.  I  told 
her  I  hadn't  the  money;  she  said  she  would  help 
me  and  she  did  help  me.  At  her  instigation  I 
wrote  to  David  Starr  Jordan,  at  that  time  Pres- 
ident at  Bloomington,  and  he  was  good  enough 
to  relax  scholastic  requirements  in  my  favor,  for 
he  agreed  with  Miss  Fielding  that  I  would  get 

U 


the  intellectual  atmosphere  at  college  and  such 
an  experience  must  do  me  good. 

"I  attended  college  for  something  over  a  year, 
from  eighteen  to  nineteen.  I  learned  little  in 
the  way  of  positive  knowledge,  but  I  got  a  vision 
of  the  intellectual  fields  and  began  to  realize  the 
significance  of  languages  and  scientific  studies. 
But  the  economic  pressure  was  too  heavy  on  me 
and  at  nineteen  I  returned  to  Chicago  and  be- 
came a  clerk  in  a  real  estate  office — a  rent  chaser 
at  $8  a  week.  This  work  gave  me  some  time  to 
myself;  after  I  had  collected  my  rents  I  could 
spend  the  afternoon  and  evening  reading;  but 
the  company  failed  and  I  became  a  collector  for 
a  furniture  house  at  $12  a  week;  a  little  later  I 
got  $14  a  week.  I  found  it  possible  here  by 
working  earnestly  to  get  time  to  myself,  and  I 
read  Green's  "History  of  England,"  Guizot's 
"France"  and  Macaulay.  But  my  daily  work 
seemed  trivial  to  me  and  I  felt  I  was  no  good 
at  it." 

I  have  dwelt  at  length  on  this  early  failure  of 
Dreiser  as  a  business  man,  because  I  believe  it 
explains  his  wonderful  painting  of  Hurstwood's 
failure  and  fall  to  ruin  in  "Sister  Carrie." 
Dreiser  soon  found  the  upward  path.  Again  I 
let  him  tell  his  story: 

"At  this  time  Eugene  Field  was  writing  for 
the  Chicago  Daily  News  little  pictures  of  Chi- 
cago life    After  reading  two  or  three  of  them 

S5 


I  thought  I  ought  to  be  able  to  do  work  like 
that  myself.  I  sat  down  and  wrote  a  lot  of  sim- 
ilar sketches  and  sent  them  to  him,  but  he  never 
answered  me.  This  was  the  nadir  of  my  depres- 
sion. Life  was  most  beautiful  to  me — thrilling 
as  a  poem.  When  I  thought  of  the  girls  I  passed 
in  the  street  I  could  have  sung  or  wept,  they 
were  so  attractive  to  me,  but  my  own  relation  to 
life  was  all  wrong  and  I  did  not  know  how  to  set 
it  right;  it  was  Field  who  started  me  thinking 
about  becoming  a  reporter  and  writer. 

"I  began  haunting  newspaper  offices  and  ask- 
ing whether  they  needed  anybody.  They  all 
gave  me  "no"  for  an  answer.  One  day  I  talked 
to  a  man  who  told  me  I  should  go  to  some  small 
paper  like  the  Chicago  Globe,  I  did  this,  but 
had  no  better  luck. 

"My  mother  died  this  fall,  and  I  was  abso- 
lutely alone  and  forlorn. 

"That  winter  I  met  a  girl.  She  was  a  clerk 
in  a  department  store,  quite  simple  and  beautiful. 
We  fell  in  love  with  each  other.  She  brought 
me  the  stimulus  I  needed.  I  had  saved  about 
$60.  I  resolved  to  quit  the  business  game  for 
good  and  all  and  jump  into  the  stream.  In  May, 
1891,  I  resigned;  I  would  starve  or  get  into 
newspaper  work. 

"Well,  I  hung  around  newspaper  offices  till  I 
was  as  well  known  as  a  lost  dog.  At  length  I 
met  a  man  who  helped  me.    John  Maxwell  was 

86 


the  copy-reader  for  the  Chicago  Globe;  a  big 
man  seemingly  cynical  and  contemptuous  of 
everything,  not  excepting  me,  but  underneath 
his  rough  exterior  he  was  all  genial  kindness 
and  sweetness.  He  saw  me  one  day  and  asked 
me  about  my  life.  I  told  him  everything  and  he 
began  by  saying  that  the  newspaper  game  was 
not  worth  anything ;  but  if  I  wanted  to  get  into 
it  I  easily  could.  There  was  a  great  National 
Democratic  Convention  coming  on  in  June;  I 
ought  to  get  work  then.  He  got  the  Globe  to 
give  me  a  trial  and  told  me  to  go  and  get  all  the 
facts  I  could  about  the  Democratic  Convention. 
"I  remember  that  a  dinner  was  being  given 
to  a  Senator  from  South  Carolina.  It  seemed 
that  he  was  "the  dark  horse"  and  might  be 
elected  instead  of  Cleveland.  I  happened  to 
say  in  the  auditorium  that  he  ought  to  be  elected, 
in  my  opinion.  I  had  no  reason  for  it;  I  just 
said  it  to  show  an  original  point  of  view.  Stand- 
ing near  me  was  a  large  man  in  a  light  suit.  He 
immediately  introduced  himself  to  me  as  the 
Senator  in  question  and  asked  me  to  come  up  to 
his  room.  I  went  with  him;  I  remember  that 
his  room  had  a  balcony  with  a  window  looking 
over  the  lake.  He  said:  *I  can  tell  you  things 
and  will.  You  were  good  enough  to  mention  me, 
but  to-night  at  midnight  Cleveland  will  be 
elected ;  the  Convention  which  is  now  in  session 
has  fixed  that.    Take  my  name  to  the  secretary 

87 


of  Mr.  W.  C.  Whitney  and  tell  him  I  sent  you; 
he'll  give  you  all  details.' 

"I  thanked  him  and  did  as  I  was  told  and  got 
the  scoop.  I  ran  to  the  Globe  office  and  told 
John  Maxwell.  He  said:  'Sit  down  and  write 
itl'  I  did  write  it  and  he  fixed  it  up,  re-writing 
a  good  deal  of  it  himself.  The  two  columns 
made  a  sensation,  but  when  I  saw  the  story  in 
print  I  saw  that  it  was  Maxwell's  work  that  had 
made  it  and  not  mine. 

"Then  I  came  across  another  writer,  John  C. 
Mclnnins;  he  drank  like  a  fish,  but  took  a  fancy 
to  me.  He  gave  me  the  idea  of  writing  up  the 
fake  auction  shops  and  told  me  I  could  drive 
them  out  of  business.  They  began  by  trying  to 
bribe  me.  One  gave  me  a  gold  watch,  another 
$100,  to  be  let  alone.  I  handed  over  the  watch 
and  the  money  to  the  police  and  my  articles  got 
all  the  shops  closed  up. 

"Next  year  the  World's  Fair  was  to  be  held  in 
St.  Louis.  I  obtained  an  introduction  to  Joseph 
B.  McCullough  of  the  Globe-Democrat,  and  he 
gave  me  work  at  $20  a  week.  I  had  only  a  poor 
bedroom,  and  so  I  spent  all  day  in  the  office, 
which  turned  out  to  be  a  very  fortunate  thing 
for  me. 

"I  was  not  earning  my  money,  when  one  day 
a  real  estate  man  came  into  the  office  who  said  he 
had  just  come  from  Chicago  and  had  seen  a  big 
wreck  on  the  Alton  railway;  the  train  was  burn- 

88 


ing  and  a  reporter  ought  to  be  sent  out  at  once. 
I  decided  to  go  myself.  There  happened  to  be 
an  oil  train  on  the  next  siding,  and  just  as  I  got 
on  the  spot  the  fire  reached  the  oil  and  there  was 
a  terrific  explosion;  thirty-two  people  were 
killed  and  I  had  seen  it  happen. 

"I  wired  a  rough  sketch  to  the  city  editor  and 
asked  him  to  send  me  down  an  artist;  then  I 
went  back  wondering  whether  I  should  be 
praised  or  "fired,"  I  was  still  so  nervous  about 
myself. 

"McCullough  was  a  little  fat  Irishman, 
brusque  in  manner  but  kindly.  Some  years  later 
he  committed  suicide.  He  always  sat  at  his  desk 
with  a  circle  of  papers  strewn  all  round  him; 
the  moment  he  had  looked  through  one  he  threw 
it  on  the  floor.  As  soon  as  I  got  back  I  was  sent 
for  by  him.  I  went  to  his  presence  in  fear  and 
trembling,  but  he  quickly  reassured  me. 

*'  'You  have  done  a  fine  piece  of  work,'  he 
said.  'From  now  on  you  get  $25  a  week,  and 
here  is  a  small  present  for  you  for  your  initia- 
tive,' and  he  gave  me  $50  in  cash.  I  just  went 
out  and  turned  hand-springs  all  over  St.  Louis. 
A  little  later  the  dramatic  editor  resigned  and  I 
decided  to  ask  for  the  place.  I  waylaid  McCul- 
lough  as  he  entered  the  building,  but  could 
hardly  get  the  words  out: 

"  Would  you  let  me  try  to  be  dramatic  editor?' 
I  asked. 

89. 


"He  looked  at  me  and  snapped:  'All  right; 
you  are  the  dramatic  editor,'  and  went  on. 

"I  had  already  tried  to  write  poetry  and  now 
I  wrote  a  sensational  comedy  and  a  comic  opera, 
but  neither  of  them  came  to  anything  and  they 
finally  got  lost. 

"I  made  up  my  mind  to  go  to  New  York  and 
I  arrived  in  Manhattan  Island  by  way  of  Toledo 
and  Pittsburgh  in  1894. 

"I  got  on  the  World  by  an  accident.  I  went 
down  to  the  World  office  and  was  waiting  about 
when  Arthur  Brisbane,  then  a  middle-aged  man, 
with  light  sandy  hair  passed.  He  looked  at  me 
and  asked  me  who  I  was.  I  told  him  my  name 
was  Dreiser  and  I  wanted  a  job.  He  took  me 
over  to  a  man  called  Quail  and  said :  'Give  him 
a  desk  and  an  assignment.' 

"I  failed  lamentably  on  the  PForld.  The  great 
city  scared  me  stiff.  I  was  told  to  go  and  inter- 
view Russell  Sage  about  something.  They  might 
as  well  have  asked  me  to  interview  St.  Peter. 
Then  there  was  a  fight  in  the  Hoffman  House 
between  two  sports — well-known  men  both — 
Whitneys  or  Vanderbilts,  I  forget  the  names. 
I  went  up  but  could  not  for  the  life  of  me  go  in 
and  speak  to  the  manager.  I  was  too  shy. 
Fancy,  David  Graham  Phillips  and  Richard 
Harding  Davis  had  just  left  the  World,  and  in 
comparison  with  such  masters  I  failed  abso- 
lutely. 

90 


"I  should  have  come  to  utter  grief  at  twenty- 
three  or  twenty-four  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
fact  that  my  brother  was  an  actor  and  wrote 
popular  songs.  He  was  a  good  many  years  older 
than  I  was  and  I  used  to  hang  around  his  office. 
At  this  time  he  was  trying  to  bring  out  a  paper. 
I  went  to  Brentano's  and  found  some  English 
and  French  papers — Pick-me-up,  he  Rire, 
Truth.  I  saw  that  they  were  new,  thought  they 
would  catch  on.  I  helped  my  brother  with  his 
paper  and  we  had  a  certain  success.  I  worked 
on  it  for  two  years  and  learned  the  business. 

"About  this  time  I  read  the  'Data  of  Ethics* 
and  'First  Principles'  of  Herbert  Spencer.  They 
nearly  killed  me,  took  every  shred  of  belief  away 
from  me;  showed  me  that  I  was  a  chemical  atom 
in  a  whirl  of  unknown  forces;  the  realization 
clouded  my  mind.  I  felt  the  rhythm  of  life,  but 
the  central  fact  to  me  was  that  the  whole  thing 
was  unknowable — incomprehensible.  I  went 
into  the  depths  and  I  am  not  sure  that  I  have 
ever  got  entirely  out  of  them.  I  have  not  much 
of  a  creed — certainly  no  happy  or  inspiring  be- 
lief to  this  day. 

"But  the  other  side  of  me  had  grown  too.  In 
St.  Louis  I  had  met  a  very  lovely  girl — religious, 
thoughtful,  well-read.  I  married  her  in  1898, 
and  that  year  I  wrote  'Sister  Carrie,'  when  I  was 
twenty-seven,  my  wife  helping  me  a  great  deal. 

"In  half  a  year  I  realized  that  for  me  mar- 
9f 


riage  was  a  disaster.  At  the  end  of  the  first  year 
and  a  half  it  had  become  a  torture.  It  was  a 
binding  state  and  I  was  not  to  be  bound.  My 
wife  was  good  and  kind  and  all  the  rest  of  it, 
but  tied  to  her  I  could  not  get  any  good  out  of 
matrimony.  I  was  afraid  I'd  go  mad.  I  begged 
her  to  set  me  free  and  she  did." 

These  are  the  chief  formative  incidents  of 
Dreiser's  life  and  they  tell  us,  I  think,  a  good 
deal  about  his  nature  and  his  environment 
First  of  all,  he  would  not  have  been  helped  in 
his  newspaper  work  in  any  European  country  as 
he  was  helped  in  America;  then  his  shyness  with 
girls  and  his  fear  of  failure  in  life  show  a  long 
continued  immaturity. 

Such  slowness  of  growth  and  youthful  ineffec- 
tiveness are  very  rare,  I  imagine,  in  men  of  great 
intellectual  power.  Nearly  all  the  men  who 
have  made  a  name  in  literature  or  art  have  been 
distinguished  by  extraordinary  precocity;  but  I 
see  no  reason  for  this  in  the  nature  of  things  and 
I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  those  destined  to 
grow  for  many  years  usually  grow  slowly  at  first 
like  oak  trees. 

Now  to  give  some  idea  of  the  man  as  he  is  to- 
day and  especially  of  his  mind. 

First  of  all  he  is  a  radical  in  politics,  as  are 
most  men  who  think  for  themselves.  As  is  nat- 
ural, he  is  for  complete  freedom  in  art  and  lit- 
erature. ^ 

92 


The  treatment  accorded  to  his  first  book, 
"Sister  Carrie,"  was  bad  enough  to  make  a 
Liberal  of  anyone. 

The  book  was  written  between  October,  1899, 
and  May,  1900.  He  sent  it  to  Harper  & 
Brothers,  who  rejected  it.  Then  it  was  taken  to 
Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  who  accepted  it  and 
drew  up  a  contract  giving  Dreiser  fifteen  per 
cent,  as  a  royalty.  Frank  Norris  was  their 
reader  at  the  time.  Walter  H.  Page  wrote 
Dreiser  a  letter  congratulating  him  on  the  book. 

But  Mrs.  Doubleday  did  not  approve  of  the 
book,  and  so  it  was  condemned.  Norris  sug- 
gested that  Doubleday  should  be  held  to  his  con- 
tract, and  Dreiser  followed  his  counsel.  Years 
later  Thomas  H.  McKee,  who  was  then  Double- 
day's  attorney,  told  Dreiser  that  the  firm  came 
to  him  for  advice  how  best  to  suppress  the  book. 
He  told  them  to  publish  a  given  number  of 
copies  and  put  them  in  their  cellar.  This  they 
did.  Outside  a  few  copies  sent  by  Norris  to  re- 
viewers, not  one  was  given  out  or  sold.  The  only 
hearing  the  book  received  was  in  England  where 
Heinemann  issued  it  the  following  year  (1901). 
It  was  an  immediate  and  unqualified  success. 

Dreiser's  books  brought  him  again  and  again 
into  conflict  with  the  lewd  puritanism  which  is 
the  disgrace  and  curse  of  American  life. 

In  1914  his  novel,  "The  Titan,"  was  accepted 
bj  Harper's.    An  edition  of  ten  thousand  was 


printed  and  then  the  book  was  thrown  back  on 
the  author's  hands  to  be  disposed  of  as  he  might 
think  fit.  Someone  or  other  regarded  it,  too.  as 
immoral.  Dreiser  has  never  been  able  to  learn 
even  the  name  of  his  critic. 

Only  the  other  day  the  infamous  Society  for 
the  Suppression  of  Vice  proceeded  against  his 
latest  book,  "The  Genius,"  frightened  the  pub- 
lisher out  of  his  wits  and  thereby  robbed  Dreiser 
of  nearly  all  the  pecuniary  results  of  two  years' 
labor.  I  say  "robbed"  advisedly,  for  when  this 
vile  society  is  defeated  in  the  law-courts  it  never 
even  attempts  to  make  reparation  to  its  innocent 
victims. 

More  recently  still,  in  the  winter  of  1917,  a 
four-act  tragedy  Dreiser  had  written  was  refused 
by  his  present  publishers,  not  on  the  ground  that 
it  was  immoral,  but  that  it  was  "too  terrible." 
Too  terrible  for  the  shallow  surface  optimism 
of  America. 

Dreiser  is  one  of  the  first  writers  and  thinkers 
in  the  country:  we  punish  him  or  allow  him  to 
be  punished  for  doing  the  best  in  him,  for  giving 
us  of  his  best  with  utmost  effort  of  brain  and 
heart.  This  is  a  symptom  of  mortal  disease  in 
the  body  corporate.  The  mere  idea  will  make 
most  people  smile;  American  civilization  con- 
demned because  a  Dreiser  is  mulcted  in  a  couple 
of  thousand  dollars  for  writing  "The  Genius!" 
Ha!  ha!  ha!  and  again,  Ho!  ho! 

94 


It  seems  to  me  that  the  teaching  of  history  on 
this  matter  is  unequivocal.  No  nation  can  per- 
secute its  prophets  without  paying  the  penalty. 

We  all  know  how  the  Jews  treated  their 
prophets;  they  were  warned  on  the  highest  au- 
thority that  such  conduct  would  bring  ruin  on 
them:  Your  houses  shall  be  left  unto  you  deso- 
late.   The  prediction  has  been  duly  fulfilled. 

But  now  to  return  to  Dreiser.  He  stands  for 
freedom  in  its  widest  sense  and  toleration  to  the 
extreme.  He  loves  liberty  perhaps  too  much  to 
advocate  doles  to  struggling  men  of  letters  or  to 
the  widows  of  writers  and  their  orphans  such 
as  are  provided  in  Great  Britain;  but  he 
would  have  no  serious  objection  to  such  char- 
itable assistance.  In  any  case  he  would  hardly 
look  on  this  charity  as  a  duty  and  a  most  im- 
portant duty  of  the  State.  That  is  to  say  he  is 
an  American  and  has  but  a  vague  conception  of 
an  ordered  and  highly  organized  State,  such  as 
alone  can  survive  in  the  world-competition  of 
the  future.  He  thinks  that  all  he  has  a  right  to 
ask  is  freedom  to  live  his  own  life,  think  his  own 
thoughts  and  write  as  he  likes,  and  he  is  exas- 
perated by  finding  his  freedom  to  write  curtailed 
by  the  vulgar  prejudice  of  a  society  of  lewd  busy- 
bodies  led  by  an  unscrupulous  hypocrite. 

Now  what  are  his  thoughts  on  the  deepest 
questions?  He  has  come  through  the  Slough  of 
Despond  as  Christian  ^H,  but  has  he  found  firm 

95 


ground  on  the  other  side?  Is  he  one  of  the 
bringers  of  light  sacred  forever  or  is  he  content 
to  stumble  about  in  darkness  unillumined?  He 
tells  me  that  he  can  see  no  object  in  things — no 
goal;  nor  in  the  life  of  man  any  purpose;  cer- 
tainly no  moral  purpose  or  plan.  Acts  have  their 
consequences  which  he  is  willing  to  believe  are 
logical,  though  he  is  far  from  sure  even  of  that; 
often  the  results  of  slight  errors  are  so  dreadful 
as  to  suggest  malevolence.  We  men  are  male- 
volent often;  why  not  the  Maker  of  men? 

Kat,  drink,  work  and  be  merry,  therefore,  for 
to-morrow  you  die,  seems  to  me  a  fair  summary 
of  his  belief,  which  indeed  is  the  comfortless 
creed  of  a  majority  of  his  countrymen — "on  evil 
days  now  fallen  and  evil  tongues." 

It  is  to  Dreiser's  credit  and  the  credit  of  our 
long-suffering  and  resilient  human  nature  that 
his  despairing  outlook  on  life  does  not  make  him 
cruel  or  indifferent  to  others'  suffering  or  indeed 
unduly  depressed  and  melancholy.  He  takes 
the  goods  the  gods  send  and  is  fairly  content  so 
long  as  health  and  strength  endure;  a  good  din- 
ner and  good  talk  are  good  things,  and  a  girl's 
lips  and^the  surrender  in  her  eyes  can  make  a 
new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  for  him.  That  is, 
Dreiser  is  in  fairly  true  relation  to  the  centre  of 
gravity  of  this  world  even  if  he  has  no  notion 
how  the  centre  is  changing  and  whither  this  solid 
I'obc  itself  is  moving  with  all  that  it  inhabit. 

% 


And  so  he  is  a  fair  and  interesting  critic  of 
other  men's  work  and  a  helpful  influence,  this 
robust,  healthy,  sincere  and  outspoken  man, 
Dreiser. 

He  thinks  both  Twain  and  Dickens  negligible, 
and  he  does  not  admire  Emerson  or  Whitman 
wholeheartedly,  much  less  will  he  admit  that 
my  admiration  of  David  Graham  Phillips  is 
well-founded.  Here  his  criticism  is  that  of  a 
creator;  he  says: 

"David  Graham  Phillips  often  sketches  a 
character  and  then  loses  hold  of  it  and  in  the 
course  of  the  narration  allows  another  soul  to 
enter  in  and  possess  the  name.'' 

"What  novel  do  you  refer  to?"  I  challenged. 

"Old  Wives  for  New,"  he  replied,  "the  hero- 
ine changes  completely." 

"I  don't  agree  with  you,"  was  all  I  could  say. 
"Your  point  is  often  just,  but  it  does  not  apply 
to  Phillips  in  my  opinion,"  and  then  I  carried 
the  war  into  his  country. 

"Why  have  you  repeated  yourself?"  I  asked. 
"It  is  a  sign  of  povertv,  surely." 

"Havel?"heasked^.    "Where?" 

"  'Jenny  Gerhardt,' "  I  said,  "is  only  a  better 
'Sister  Carrie' ;  then  you  have  done  'The  Finan- 
cier' and  'The  Titan,'  two  books  to  give  the  one 
figure  of  'The  Millionaire.' " 

"I'm  going  to  do  another  on  him,"  he  growled ; 
"and  why  not?" 

97 


"No  reason,"  I  retorted,  "save  that  it  is  a 
mere  replica  or  copy." 

"I  don't  agree  with  you,"  he  said  stoutly;  "it 
is  a  development." 

"And  then  the  faults  in  the  drawing,"  I  went 
on  in  a  flank  attack,  "weaken  or  rather  destroy 
faith  in  you.  True,  the  figure  of  the  'Million- 
aire' is  one  of  the  few  generic  figures  of  our  time ; 
a  figure  that  should  be  painted  once  for  all; 
Sancho  Panza  throned  and  triumphant;  but 
you've  been  too  true  to  life;  too  realistic." 

"How  do  you  make  that  out?"  he  dissented. 

"You  send  your  millionaire  to  prison  in  'The 
Financier,'"  I  went  on;  "that  showed  me  you 
were  probably  drawing  him  from  life,  for  finan- 
ciers as  a  rule  don't  go  to  prison  in  the  United 
States.  The  incident  is  so  improbable  that  as  a 
matter  of  art  it  is  worse  than  untrue.  I  made 
some  inquiries  and  found  that  Yerkes  had  been 
sent  to  prison  in  Philadelphia;  altogether  too 
greedy  as  a  young  man,  even  for  American  tol- 
erance. As  soon  as  I  read  in  'The  Titan'  that 
your  financier  after  his  release  went  west  to  Chi- 
cago and  worked  to  get  the  street-car  system 
into  his  control,  I  knew  my  guess  v/as  right  and 
you  had  taken  Yerkes  for  your  model,  for  it  is 
almost  as  unlikely  that  a  great  financier  should 
go  west  as  it  is  that  he  should  be  imprisoned. 
Great  financiers  in  America  are  attracted  to  the 
east — to  New  York — the  biggest  market  with  the 

98 


largest  prizes,  draws  irresistibly.  Accordingly 
your  books  seem  true  to  life  and  not  to  art  in 
these  particulars,  for  art  is  life  generalized  a 
little." 

"I  would  not  have  believed,"  he  interrupted, 
"that  any  critic  in  another  country  could  have 
drawn  such  subtle  and  true  deductions,  you  are 
quite  right,  I  had  Yerkes  in  my  mind  as  a  model 
when  I  wrote  'The  Financier'  and  'The  Titan.'  " 

"In  'The  Titan,'  too,"  I  continued,  "towards 
the  end  I  recognized  the  original  of  the  girl  who 
won  the  hero. 

"I  dare  say,"  Dreiser  admitted  laughing. 

"There  is  no  mistake  in  taking  the  girl  from 
life,"  I  cried,  "but  sending  your  model  financier 
to  prison  was  a  blunder,  was  it  not?" 

"I  see  what  you  mean,"  he  said  thoughtfully, 
"and  perhaps  you  are  right.  I  am  not  con- 
vinced." 

"The  financier,"  I  went  on,  pressing  the  point, 
"is  always  a  master  of  everyday  life;  he  would 
make  no  mistake  in  dealing  with  it." 

"What  do  you  think  of  the  books  in  other 
respects?"  he  asked. 

"They  are  vivid,"  I  replied,  "and  there's  a 
splendid  love-story  in  'The  Financier';  but  I 
don't  think  your  portrait  of  the  millionaire  will 
live.  You  have  not  made  large  sums  of  money 
yourself  or  you  would  have  painted  him  dif- 
ferently.   You  have  not  given  us  even  his  enor- 

99 


mous  urge  or  driving  power  which  is  also  his 
chief  weakness.  It  would  take  too  long  to  ex- 
plain. Your  picture  is  much  the  same  as  the  one 
Claretie  gave  us  in  *Le  Milion'  thirty  years  ago." 

Dreiser  bore  my  criticism  very  well,  I  thought. 
I  wanted  him  to  see  that  in  Europe  the  best  lit- 
erary criticism  is  of  enormous  assistance  to  the 
true  artist;  for  it  keeps  him  on  stretch,  forces 
him  to  dig  deep  into  himself  to  find  the  pure  ore 
of  human  nature.  Had  "Sister  Carrie"  been 
produced  in  London  the  author's  next  books 
would  have  shown  distinct  growth,  I  believe, 
because  "Sister  Carrie"  would  have  been  praised 
so  warmly  and  yet  with  such  penetrating  dis- 
crimination that  its  author  would  have  been  en- 
couraged at  once  and  nerved  to  do  even  better 
than  his  best. 

Dreiser  told  me  what  indeed  anyone  might 
have  guessed  that  "Sister  Carrie"  met  with  a 
cold  reception  on  the  whole,  and  the  few  who 
praised,  did  so  in  fear  and  dread  of  puritanic 
condemnation.  Sister  Carrie  gave  herself  with- 
out the  sanction  of  marriage,  and,  a  worse  fea- 
ture still,  succeeded  in  life  by  reason  of  her 
lapses  instead  of  being  "ruined"  as  puritanism 
would  have  it,  and  accordingly  the  book  was  con- 
demned in  the  United  States  because  of  the  vital 
truth  in  it. 

I  have  gone  into  this  matter  at  some  length 
because  I  wish  to  show  how  the  outworn  puri- 

100 


tanic  creed  still  injures  all  works  of  literary  art 
in  America  and  is  apt,  too,  to  injure  if  not  to 
ruin  the  artist. 

The  atmosphere  here  is  far  more  blighting 
than  it  is  even  in  England,  and  yet  for  nearly  a 
century  now  English  prudery  has  prevented  the 
publication  of  any  novel  which  could  be  re- 
garded as  a  masterpiece  and  read  all  over  Eu- 
rope. In  the  public  interest  our  prudery  and 
Puritanism  must  be  fought.  Of  course,  the 
Author's  League  should  have  taken  up  arms  for 
Mr.  Dreiser  long  ago  and  defended  him  against 
the  idiotic  attacks  of  the  self-styled  Society  for 
the  Suppression  of  Vice;  but  it  looks  as  if  the 
Authors'  League  here  as  in  Great  Britain  was 
only  devised  to  provide  berths  for  half  a  dozen 
mediocrities. 

Meanwhile  the  great  writers  suffer.  Walt 
Whitman  was  hounded  out  of  Washington  and 
lost  his  post  there,  was  ostracised,  indeed,  for 
twenty-five  years,  and  Dreiser  has  been  attacked 
and  punished  for  writing  above  the  heads  of  the 
crowd.  Yet  he  is  full  of  hope  and  high  purpose 
with  half  a  dozen  books  in  hand;  a  volume  of 
essays,  a  philosophic  work  setting  forth  the  out- 
lines at  least  of  his  creed,  the  third  book  of  the 
trilogy  on  the  millionaire  and  other  novels. 

All  these  projects  and  endeavors  simply  go  to 
prove  how  indefatigable  and  unconquerable  a 
man  is  when  he  is  lucky  enough  or  wise  enough 

.101 


to  have  found  his  true  work  and  to  be  able  to 
do  it. 

When  we  thwart  him,  ours  is  the  loss.  We 
have  only  had  a  half  product  from  Dreiser — a 
thought  which  sometimes  depresses  me,  though 
the  great  public  does  not  seem  to  mind  much. 

Even  now  I  find  I  have  said  little  about  Mr. 
Dreiser's  latest  book,  "The  Genius,"  and  not  a 
word  about  his  plays,  and  yet  they  both  deserve 
careful  consideration. 

"The  Genius" — what  a  title!  It  quite  excited 
me  to  think  beforehand  how  one  would  try  to 
make  "A  Genius"  real  and  recognizable  to  the 
reader.  Dreiser  put  his  title  "The  Genius"  in 
inverted  commas,  I  imagine,  in  sincere  doubt 
whether  this  animated  embodiment  of  himself 
or  at  least  reflection  of  some  of  his  strongest  de- 
sires and  feelings  was  really  a  possessor  of  the 
divine  spark? 

The  lady  novelist  usually  paints  her  hero  as 
superbly  handsome,  brave  and  gentle,  and  then 
throws  in  the  remark — "he  was  besides  a  man  of 
genius."  But  it  takes  a  little  more  than  that  to 
convince  us  of  genius.  The  novelist  who  takes 
his  art  seriously  is  bound  to  realize  his  praise;  he 
must  at  least  show  us  the  genius  acting  or  talking 
as  no  one  but  a  genius  could  act  or  talk.  This 
Dreiser  has  failed  to  do,  has  not  even  tried  to  do. 

His  hero  made  up  in  almost  equal  parts  of 
«»exual  desire  and  love  of  art  is  an  interesting 

102 


person  enough;  but  just  genius  is  lacking  to  him 
in  my  poor  opinion.  He  is  not  dynamic  or  ex- 
traordinary in  any  way.  Why  then  call  him  a 
**genius/'  even  in  inverted  commas?  The  soul 
of  genius  is  a  constant  striving  towards  the  light, 
like  a  flower  pushing  its  way  up  through  black 
encumbering  earth  and  even  through  crevices  of 
stone  to  air  and  sunlight. 

Growth  is  the  birthmark  of  genius,  a  per- 
petual thirst  for  a  larger,  richer  life.  Dreiser's 
"Genius"  appears  to  go  from  girl  to  girl  lured 
by  youth  and  beauty  without  any  further  or 
higher  selection  whatsoever.  Of  course,  the  sex 
desire  has  eyes  chiefly  for  beauty  and  youth,  but 
in  other  respects  it  is  not  blind.  Just  in  the  case 
of  genius  there  is  a  seeking  after  a  new  experi- 
ence, a  more  womanly  woman  and  this  groping 
desire  is  guided  by  the  aesthetic  impulse  which 
demands  ever  richer  nourishment. 

The  sex-life  of  a  genius  is  of  the  most  intense 
interest.  Shakespeare  has  given  us  three  great 
pictures  of  it;  romantic  love  in  "Romeo  and 
Juliet,"  mature  passion  in  "Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra," lust  and  jealousy  in  "Othello,"  and 
Goethe  has  given  one  in  the  Gretchen  episode 
in  "Faust"  of  equal  value,  just  as  Dante  has 
given  another;  but  the  sex-life  of  an  ordinary 
intelligence  is  of  slight  concern,  and  accordingly 
I  don't  admire  "The  Genius"  of  Dreiser  greatly. 
One  of  his  plays,  "The  Girl  in  the  Coffin," 
103 


interested  me  infinitely  more;  it  gives  a  great 
stage-picture;  is  true  to  life,  too,  and  yet  preaches 
forgiveness  for  sex-sins  superbly. 

Now  what  may  be  expected  from  Dreiser? 
Is  he  going  on  from  strength  to  strength  till  he 
fulfils  himself  in  some  masterpiece  or  shall  we 
get  from  him  only  a  half-product,  another 
"Sister  Carrie,"  of  great  promise  and  half  per- 
formance? 

I  cannot  tell;  I  can  only  hope  for  the  best. 
Usually  the  master  who  has  a  great  deal  to  say 
is  at  first  careless,  as  Balzac  was,  of  how  he  says 
it,  and  grows  more  and  more  particular  about 
form  as  he  grows  older.  But  I  don't  see  any 
growth  in  Dreiser  in  this  direction.  Some  of 
his  letters  are  excellently  written;  but  in  his 
books  he  is  often  careless.  Even  in  the  portraits 
of  his  father  and  mother,  in  "A  Hoosier's  Holi- 
day," all  steeped  in  love  though  they  are,  there 
is  little  or  no  verbal  music;  his  brush-strokes 
even  are  not  studied;  he  repeats  himself  in  suc- 
cessive clauses:  "A  great  poet-mother,  a  great- 
hearted mother,"  without  a  reason  or  rather  in 
spite  of  reason:  he  compares  his  father  to  "Saint 
Simon  or  Francis  of  Assisi,"  and  one  pauses  in 
shocked  bewilderment;  which  Saint  Simon  does 
he  mean?  In  any  case,  these  two  examples  are 
of  contrasting  type.  I  could  give  many  instances 
of  similar  blunders.  There  are  whole  pages  in 
every  book  of  Dreiser's  so  badly  written  that 

104 


they  affect  me  like  gravel-grit  in  my  mouth  and 
I  am  not  inclined  to  over-estimate  mere  verbal 
felicity.  Worst  of  all,  I  feel  perpetually  that 
Preiser  might  write  so  much  better  than  he  does 
if  he  would  but  try  to  do  his  best;  he  has  the 
gift — why  not  the  ideal?  I  am  constrained  to 
think  it  is  the  German  paste  in  him  that  makes 
him  so  blind  to  the  beauty  of  words. 

His  latest  play,  "The  Potter's  Hand,"  testifies 
to  even  a  worse  fault,  what  Goethe  called  the 
lack  of  architectural  or  structural  symmetry. 
The  protagonist  of  the  play  is  an  erotomaniac 
who  rapes  and  murders  a  little  girl  and  at  last 
commits  suicide.  Dreiser  brings  out  all  the 
tragedy  of  the  poor  creature's  insane  and  mis- 
erable existence;  and  w^e  read  it  with  terror  and 
pity.  It  is  plain  that  with  the  suicide  the  action 
finishes  and  the  interest  is  at  an  end,  but  Dreiser 
drags  in  reporters  to  moralize  the  situation  in  a 
way  that  would  be  intolerable  to  any  audience ; 
the  tragedy  is  thereby  rendered  formless.  It 
would  almost  seem  as  if  Dreiser  were  incapable 
of  self-criticism. 

There  they  are  before  me,  his  eight  stout  vol- 
umes, ^nd  reluctantly  I  am  forced  to  admit  that 
so  far  "Sister  Carrie,"  his  earliest  book,  is  his 
best.  Of  course,  the  critics  and  the  public  as 
well  as  the  writer  are  to  blame  for  this  imperfect 
result;  but  explain,  excuse  it  as  you  will,  the  fact 
is  indubitable:  and  no  explanation  can  justify 

105 


such  a  fact;  Browning  tells  us  truly  that  "In- 
centives come  from  the  soul's  self." 

Genius  has  always  the  faculty  of  taking  in- 
finite pains.  When  Shelley  pointed  out  to  Keats 
some  weak  lines  in  his  "Endymion,"  Keats 
thanked  him  and  added :  "I  want  to  fill  the 
rifts  with  gold."  That's  the  true  spirit  magnifi- 
cently expressed.  In  the  Pantheon  of  Humanity 
there  is  no  place  for  the  careless  or  slipshod; 
our  gods  are  all  human  yet  all  give  us  of  their 
best,  and  so,  as  Burns  knew,  "whiles  do  mair." 


106 


George  Moore 


GEORGE  MOORE  AND  JESUS 

HAVE  never  written  a  word  about 
George  Moore,  never  criticized  a 
book  of  his  ,  never  mentioned  him 
or  discussed  his  work  in  print,  and 
yet  I  have  known  him  longer  than 
I  have  known  any  other  man  of  letters;  known 
him  fairly  intimately  for  over  thirty-five  years. 
I  have  never  had  a  quarrel  with   him.     I 
admire  some  of  his  books — particularly  "The 
Mummer's  Wife"   and   "Esther  Waters,"  and 
enjoy  "The  Confessions,"  and  have  told  him  so; 
and  even  more  than  his  books  I   admire  the 
singleness  of  purpose  and  persistence  with  which 
he  has  prosecuted  literature  and  developed  his 
writing  talent,  and  yet  he  has  never  interested 
me  deeply,  never  touched  my  emotions  or  quick- 
ened my  thought;  never  been  to  me  one  of  the 
wine-bearers  at  the  banquet  of  life. 

And  thi%  I  say,  not  as  lessening  him,  but  as 
my  own  confession  and  apology.  When  young 
I  believed  with  all  my  heart  that  poverty  was 
the  greatest  evil  in  the  world;  that  the  dreadful 
inequality  of  human  conditions  would  have  to 
be  righted,  brought  more  into  accord  with  our 
ideas  of  justice  before  any  great  work  of  art 

107 


would  even  be  possible.  I  think  now  I  was  mis- 
taken in  this;  but  my  belief  is  tenable,  easily 
defensible. 

Moore,  on  the  other  hand,  took  no  heed  of 
the  social  misery;  was  not  interested  in  the 
anarchy  of  individualism;  cared  nothing  for 
any  socialistic  remedy;  professed  himself  indif- 
ferent to  Utopia  and  was  frankly  bored  when 
one  talked  of  the  humanisation  of  man  in  society. 
Even  at  twenty-five  he  was  purely  a  writer — 
a  novelist  of  the  modern  realistic  school. 

Moore's  person  was  so  peculiar  as  to  pin  him 
in  the  memory:  he  was  fairly  tall,  about  five 
feet  ten  or  thereabouts,  with  sloping  bottle- 
shoulders  and  heavy  hips.  His  face  was  pallid 
like  pork,  set  off  with  rufous  drooping  mous- 
tache, while  reddish  fair  hair  waved  away  from 
a  high,  broad  forehead.  He  always  seemed  to 
me  slightly  flaccid,  weak,  inclined  to  fat;  but 
when  I  try  to  explain  this  inference  I  can  only 
recall  the  fact  that  his  hands  were  podgy  white 
and  he  was  perpetually  gesticulating  with  white 
fingers  that  looked  effeminate,  soft.  After  his 
too  fair  complexion,  his  eyes  impressed  one; 
very  prominent,  round,  pale  blue;  observant, 
enquiring  eyes,  they  seemed  to  me,  neither  re- 
ceptive nor  profound;  the  mouth  ordinary,  the 
nose  a  good  long  rudder,  prominent  enough  to 
suggest  vanity  and  rather  fleshy,  a  sensuous  but 

108 


steering  Jewish  nose  softened  still  further  by 
fleshy  soft  jaws  and  small  mound  of  chin. 

He  would  come  into  the  office  of  The  London 
Evening  News,  of  which  I  was  at  that  time  the 
Managing  Editor,  and  talk  interminably;  but 
always  of  literature,  usually  of  Zola  or  some 
one  of  Zola's  novels  or  opinions.  Whatever  the 
Frenchman  had  written  was  sacred  in  Moore's 
eyes:  Zola  filled  his  mental  horizon,  was  his 
god;  his  writings  his  Gospel.  Occasionally  he 
would  talk  of  Monet  or  Manet  or  Degas;  but 
one  soon  realized  that  his  opinion  of  painters 
and  pictures  was  a  second-hand  opinion,  an 
opinion  soaked  up  from  intercourse  with  those 
artists  themselves  or  with  still  younger  masters. 

Moore  was  always  interesting  to  me  because 
he  was  always  interested  in  what  he  had  to  say 
— enthusiastic  even;  his  voice  was  pleasant,  a 
tenor  voice  fairly  modulated  and  rhythmical; 
but  neither  his  eyes  nor  his  voice  was  so  expres- 
sive as  his  gestures,  the  fingers,  antennae-like, 
meeting  and  separating  in  front  of  your  eyes, 
seeking,  probing,  hesitating — extraordinarily  in- 
dicative of  an  inquisitive,  curious  intelligence. 
He  had  excellent  manners,  never  intruding  or 
obtrusive,  considerate  always  of  others;  the 
manners  and  dress,  too,  of  good  society;  yet 
without  a  trace  of  affectation  or  snobbishness. 
Moore  was  genuinely  interested  in  men  of  letters 
and  literary  topics  and  able  to  converse  with 
them  or  about  them,  showing  always  a  slight 

109 


agreeable  preference  for  monologue,  monologue 
about  himself  and  his  literary  plans  and  pref- 
erences. 

The  first  trait  of  his  character  which  struck 
me  was  his  extraordinary  moderation;  he  didn't 
seem  to  care  for  eating  or  drinking,  and  was 
always  as  moderate  in  both  as  a  Spaniard  or  a 
Greek.  To  his  wonderful  sobriety  he  owes  his 
almost  perfect  health. 

He  never  seemed  to  exercise,  did  not  even 
take  the  usual  "constitutional"  walk;  yet  he  was 
always  fit  and  well ;  could  walk  through  a  long 
day's  shooting  and  was  an  excellent  shot,  as  I 
found  out  once  when  he  came  to  stay  with  me 
near  Bridge  Castle  to  shoot  over  some  ground 
belonging  to  Lord  Abergavenny.    I  mention  this 
simply  to  show  that  he  had  all  the  qualifications 
of  the  English  country  gentleman,  yet  just  be- 
cause he  was  a  writer  with  a  love  of  letters  and 
knowledge   of    art,    English    society   which    is 
"sporting"  and  "horsey"  in  the  extreme  or  "bar- 
barian," as  Matthew  Arnold  called  it,  regarded 
him  with  suspicion  and  aversion  as  not  true  to 
type.    One  day  when  out  shooting,  Moore  was 
accidently  hit  by  a  glancing  pellet;  instead  of 
covering  the  sportsman's  want  of  skill  or  care 
with  silence  the  occasion  was  used  for  a  rude 
gibe. 

"What  could  Moore  expect  when  he  went  out 
shooting  with  gentlemen?"  a  double-edged  sneer 

no 


which    I    persisted   in   construing  to   Moore's 
advantage. 

Moore's  character  was  full  of  surprises  even 
to  one  acquainted  with  every  variety  of  the  Eng- 
lish man  of  letters.  His  wonderful  sobriety 
came  first;  then  perhaps  his  wide  knowledge  of 
sports  and  country  life  in  general,  and  finally 
his  keen  business  faculty  and  appreciation  of  all 
the  uses  of  advertisement.  He  never  offered 
articles  on  any  subject  without  payment,  though 
men  of  letters  in  general  are  full  of  over-ripe 
enthusiasms  for  this  or  that  cause  or  person,  and 
eager  to  display  their  tastes  in  print. 

Moore  was  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  the 
modern  French  school  of  writing  and  painting; 
would  hold  forth  about  the  masters  by  the  hour, 
yet  as  soon  as  one  said,  "Write  it,  Moore;  such 
an  article  would  be  interesting,"  he  would  reply 
— "All  right;  but  what  will  you  pay  for  it?" 

And  when  it  came  to  terms  he  was  a  stickler 
for  the  uttermost  farthing.  Not  even  in  this 
case,  however,  did  he  go  beyond  the  conven- 
tional gentlemanly  insistence.  He  was  never 
aggressive;  always  suave  and  conciliatory.  If 
you  could  pay  his  price  he  was  willing  to  write 
for  you;  if  not,  he  would  not  write,  but  was 
nevertheless  friendly,  even  amiable.  He  was 
very  precise  about  delivering  his  copy  at  the 
agreed  upon  time;  finicky  only  about  correcting 
and  recorrectinjy  proofs;  preferring  this  cadence 

111 


to  that,  this  turn  of  expression  to  that,  an  artist 
in  polishing  the  already  smooth-filed  line. 

In  this  scruple  one  peculiarity  marked  him; 
he  would  fall  in  love  with  a  word  and  try  to 
drag  it  into  his  prose  by  hook  or  by  crook.  He 
,  says  somewhere,  I  think  in  this  "Confessions" 
that  he  used  to  "learn  unusual  words  and  stick 
them  in  here  and  there";  but  he  does  not  tell 
what  sort  of  word  he  preferred.     Let  me  fill  the 

gap. 

I  remember  when  shooting  with  me  in  Sussex 
he  heard  "shaw"  for  the  first  time  used  to  de- 
scribe a  small  wood  or  covert. 

"What  a  beautiful  word,"  he  cried,  "exquis- 
ite— a  'shaw',"  and  for  some  time  afterwards 
"shaw"  appeared  again  and  again  in  his  writing. 

The  curious  thing  about  Moore's  predilection 
for  this  or  that  new  word  was  that  he  did  not 
care  for  the  meaning  of  the  word,  but  for  its 
sound  and  color.  Every  master  of  prose  loves 
words  and  is  scrupulous  to  employ  them  in  their 
exact  meaning.  Words,  like  coins,  grow  lighter 
in  the  using.  The  master  of  words,  like  a  new 
monarch,  issues  them  afresh  from  his  mint  of 
full  weight,  stamped  with  his  authority.  But 
Moore  cared  nothing  for  the  derivation  of  a 
word  or  its  true  meaning.  In  his  latest  book, 
as  in  his  earliest,  he  is  not  disdainful  merely  of 
scholarship — he  ignores  it. 

On  page  175  of  "The  Brook  Kerith"  he  speaks 
112 


of  "shards  of  shells  or  pottery."  He  docs  nof 
know  that  "shard"  is  short  for  "potsherd,"  and 
if  he  knew  he  would  not  care.  He  is  in  love 
with  the  sound  or  color  of  the  word  "shard"  and 
accordingly  writes  on  page  169  of  "some  broken 
ruins,  shards  of  an  old  castle  apparently  tenant- 
less,"  bewildering  the  ordinary  reader  who 
knows  what  "shard"  means.  The  impression 
Moore  means  to  convey  is  often  confused  in  this 
fashion  or  blunted  by  his  misuse  of  words.  An 
even  better  instance  may  be  given,  taken  at  hap- 
hazard from  the  book  under  my  hand,  at  the 
moment,  "The  Apostle."  On  meeting  Jesus, 
Paul  says: 

"Thy  face  is  not  unstrange  to  me,  yet  I  have 
never  been  among  these  hills  before."  Moore 
does  not  know  that  "unstrange"  must  be  nearly 
equivalent  to  "familiar";  the  neologism  "un- 
strange" pleased  him  and  he  stuck  it  in!  The 
truth  is  Moore's  early  training  in  Paris  as  a 
painter  has  corrupted  his  taste  in  words.  It  has 
led  him  again  and  again  to  seek  for  the  pictorial 
quality  of  a  word  or  scene,  which  is  hardly  an 
effect  proper  to  literature,  though  much  prized 
by  the  illiterate. 

To  return  to  my  immediate  theme.  Moore 
knew  by  instinct  all  the  myriad  uses  of  ad- 
vertisement. He  used  to  say,  "Attack  me  as  you 
please ;  slang  me,  but  write  about  me.  I'd  rather 
have  a  libelous  article  than  silence;  indeed,  I 

113 


think  slander  more  effective  than  eulogy.  If  you 
hate  my  books,  say  so,  please,  at  length;  that 
will  get  me  readers." 

He  rivaled  Oscar  Wilde  in  his  love  of  adver- 
tisement, knew  almost  every  newspaper  office  in 
London,  and  kept  the  doors  ajar  by  frequent 
visits.    Verily,  he  has  had  his  reward. 

ttj  have  lived  through  most  of  Moore's  wild 
enthusiasms  from  Zola  to  Turgenief.  I  remem- 
ber meeting  him  one  day  when  he  would  talk 
of  nothing  but  Flaubert.  Flaubert  was  the 
greatest  writer  France  had  ever  produced;  an 
impeccable  artist  without  fault  or  flaw — super- 
lative on  superlative.  I  could  only  smile — 
another  god ! 

Had  I  read  "L'Education  Sentimentale"? 

I  had  and  did  not  prize  it  greatly.  Gently 
I  reminded  Moore  of  his  previous  infatuation 
for  Zola.    He  confessed  mournfully. 

"How  I  could  ever  have  admired  that  farth- 
ing dip  when  the  sun  of  Flaubert  was  lighting 
the  heavens  and  warming  the  earth,  I  can't  im- 
agine. One's  aberrations  are  astonishing.  One 
changes  not  every  seven  years  as  the  physiol- 
ogists say,  but  every  three  years  or  so.  Zola  I 
He  has  no  style.  Even  his  name  is  tawdry  and 
common  to  me  now;  but  Flaubert,  Flaubert, 
Flaubert!" 

"Have  you  ever  read  his  letters?"  I  asked. 
"They  are  really  superb — especially  those  to 

114 


George  Sand.  He  talks  of  Shakespeare  with 
passionate  admiration,  as  *an  ocean.'  " 

"Does  he  really?"  wondered  Moore.  "I've 
never  read  Shakespeare — know  nothing  about 
him.     Is  he  really  great? 

Moore's  reading  was  always  fragmentary — 
peculiar.  At  that  time  he  hadn't  read  Shakes- 
peare or  the  Bible  or  indeed  any  of  the  English 
or  world  classics.  He  read  solely  what  he  liked 
or  thought  he  would  like ;  the  world  of  writers 
began  and  ended  for  him  with  the  Frenchmen 
of  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

It  was,  I  believe,  my  outspoken  preference  for 
Balzac  over  Flaubert  that  set  him  reading  "La 
Comedie  Humaine,"  consecutively,  and  even 
after  he  had  written  his  essay  on  Balzac  he  had 
not  read  "Le  Cure  de  Tours,"  which  is  the  su- 
preme example  of  Balzac's  artistry.  But  as 
soon  as  he  heard  of  it,  he  read  it  and  discussed 
it  with  some  understanding  in  the  final  revision 
of  his  essay. 

Moore's  ignorance  was  the  standard  joke 
wherever  men  of  letters  congregated.  He  had 
spent  years  as  a  boy  in  a  Roman  Catholic  college, 
he  said;  but  I  always  wondered  where  it  could 
have  been  till  I  saw  in  a  paper  that  he  left  it 
in  his  "very  early  teens"  because  he  "refused  to 
go  to  confession."  He  has  made  up  for  his  re- 
calcitrance since  by  confessing  himself  and  his 
fleshly  sins  in  print  whenever  he  could  get  the 

115 


opportunity.  But  his  ignorances  were  abysmal, 
like  those  of  a  king,  incomprehensible  to  anyone 
who  had  had  ordinary  schooling. 

Moore's  mind  seemed  incapable  of  grasping 
the  elementary  facts  of  grammar.  He  was  al- 
ways confusing  "shall"  and  "will"  and  "should" 
and  "would." 

I  often  asked  myself  how  his  boundless  con- 
tempt for  knowledge  of  all  sorts  could  coexist 
with  a  genuine  talent  for  expression  and  a  very 
real  love  of  literature.  The  enigmas  of  Moore's 
character  are  insoluble. 

For  example,  his  enthusiasm  for  great  writers 
did  not  reach  to  his  contemporaries.  Even  in 
"The  Confessions"  he  belittles  every  man  of 
genius  of  his  time:  Meredith  bores  him;  Brown- 
ing is  devoid  of  "Latin  sensuality  and  subtlety"; 
Hardy  hasn't  "a  ray  of  genius";  Henry  James 
and  Howells  are  mere  copyists.  Yet  Browning 
and  Meredith  were  greater  than  Zola  or  Flau- 
bert or  Turgenief,  and  one  cannot  understand 
Moore's  prejudices  unless  one  regards  him  as 
taking  a  French  view  of  English  writers.  He 
never  even  mentions  those  who  might  be  con- 
sidered his  rivals  save  to  sneer  or  denigrate. 
What  is  his  real  opinion  of  Shaw  or  Wilde  or 
Wells?  His  criticism  is  mainly  carping,  the 
petty  faultfinding  of  envy. 

It  was  Moore's  boldness  in  handling  sex 
matters  that  gave  him  popularity  and  position. 

116 


More  than  once  he  reached  the  limit  beyond 
which  prosecution  threatened.  Smith's  book 
stalls,  which  correspond  to  the  American  News 
Company  in  these  United  States,  refused  to  sell 
one  of  his  early  books.  Moore  at  once  attacked 
the  tradesman-censor  and  heaped  ridicule  on  the 
salesman  and  his  morals.  Mudie,  too,  a  book- 
store with  much  the  same  position  in  London 
that  Brentano  holds  in  New  York,  put  some 
novel  of  Moore's  on  the  index.  At  once  he 
slanged  Mudie  and  found  amusing  words  for  the 
book-provider  to  the  middle-class  household! 
This  perpetual  attack  and  defense  won  him  his 
following,  but  as  Moore  is  the  last  man  in  the 
world  to  play  Don  Quixote,  it  is  important  to 
know  why  he  came  into  conflict  so  often  with 
Puritanic  prudery. 

Again  I  have  to  explain  his  idiosyncratic  bold- 
ness by  his  Paris  training.  Zola  was  his  first 
master  and  he  knew  perfectly  well  that  Zola's 
sex  novels,  such  as  "Nana"  and  "La  Terre,"  were 
best  sellers.  Moreover,  to  give  Moore  his  due, 
he  divined  from  his  own  experience  that  the 
questions  of  sex  are  the  perpetually  interesting 
questions.  Had  he  been  oversexed  he  would 
certainly  have  got  into  serious  trouble  through 
his  writings;  but  his  astonishing  moderation  in 
desire  saved  him  here  as  in  life.  Even  as  a 
young  man  he  was  perpetually  declaring  that 
women  were  overrated;  that  no  sensible  man 

m 


would  put  his  finger  into  danger  for  one,  let 
alone  his  life  or  future,  or  even  his  work. 

"Woman  is  the  sauce  to  the  pudding  of  life, 
if  you  like;  but  the  whole  business  of  love  and 
loving  is  vastly  overrated." 

In  consequence  all  his  references  to  sex  mat- 
ters are  at  once  French  in  directness  of  expres- 
sion and  free  of  passion — curiously  cool,  indeed, 
and  matter-of-fact — and  therefore  void  of  seduc- 
tion and  of  offense. 

By  temperament  Moore  is  as  incapable  of 
writing  a  great  love  scene  as  Arnold  Bennett 
himself.  And  yet  women  form  ninety-nine  per 
cent  of  his  readers. 

At  length  I  am  forced  to  reveal  the  heart  of 
him;  whoever  realizes  his  astounding  modera- 
tion has  only  to  join  with  it  two  incidents  in 
order  to  know  the  man.  He  told  me  once  of  a 
supper  he  was  at  in  his  early  days  in  London. 
Lord  Rossmore,  a  handsome,  devil-may-care 
Irishman,  whom  Moore  knew  well,  was  of  the 
party.  Derry  Rossmore  drank  too  much,  grew 
a  little  loud  and  contradicted  Moore.  Moore, 
who  was  perfectly  sober,  debated  coolly  how  he 
might  turn  the  dispute  to  his  profit.  He  resolved 
to  get  Derry  to  be  rude  to  him  again  and  then 
knock  him  down.  The  row  and  consequent  duel, 
he  thought,  would  be  a  splendid  advertisement 
for  him.  Accordingly  he  moved  an  empty 
champagne  bottle  just  within  comfortable  reach 

118 


of  his  right  hand  and  provoked  Derry.  Derry 
insulted  him  as  Moore  guessed  he  would,  and 
at  once  Moore  picked  up  the  champagne  bottle 
and  knocked  Rossmore  down  with  it. 

The  story  surprised  me  so  that  I  asked  him, 
"You  did  it  just  for  the  advertisement?" 

"Yes,"  he  replied  coolly,  "and  I  failed  to  get 
it.  The  duel  never  came  oflf.  I  was  greatly  dis- 
appointed, ha  I  hal" 

Moore's  business  instincts  were  most  astonish- 
ingly developed. 

The  other  incident  is  much  better  known. 

When  Moore  went  to  Dublin  some  years  ago 
he  took  a  house,  and  a  lady  was  kind  enough  to 
help  him  in  getting  the  furniture  and  fittings  in 
order  and  continued  her  ministrations  afterwards 
to  the  detriment  of  her  reputation.  In  process 
of  time  the  pair  drifted  apart.  Soon  afterwards 
the  lady  married  a  well-known  Dublin  archi- 
tect; and  a  little  later,  died.  Moore  has  told  the 
whole  story  in  one  of  his  books;  confessed  the 
liaison  and  described  the  lady  so  minutely  that 
even  the  dead  woman's  husband  could  have  no 
doubt  as  to  her  identity. 

D'Annunzio  did  the  same  thing  in  "II  Fuoco" 
— told  the  story  of  his  love  for  the  Duse;  de- 
scribed her  minutely  and  gave  away  the  secrets 
of  intimacy;  but  D'Annunzio  might  plead  the 
driving  force  of  a  great  passion  and  the  neces- 
sity of  realizing  the  ebb  and  flow  of  extravagant 

119 


desire;  but  Moore's  indiscretion  had  not  even 
that  excuse ;  he  knew  the  revelation  would  make 
people  talk — be  an  excellent  advertisement  and 
that  was  all.  As  a  lady  said,  "Some  men  kiss 
and  tell;  others  like  George  Moore  don't  kiss 
and  tell  all  the  same." 

Still  if  he  has  done  anything  that  will  live, 
he  may  yet  get  the  better  of  detraction  and  dis- 
dain. But  has  he?  His  admirers  cite  "The 
Mummer's  Wife"  and  "Esther  Waters";  "Im- 
pressions" ;  "The  Confessions  of  a  Young  Man" ; 
but  has  any  one  been  tempted  to  read  any  of 
these  books  twice?  Yet  it  is  only  the  books  we 
read  and  re-read  a  dozen  times  which  stand  any 
chance  of  surviving.  I  cannot  believe  that  any 
of  Moore's  books  so  far  are  in  that  category.  But 
his  new  book  is  about  Jesus  and  if  he  has  written 
anything  valuable  on  that  theme,  he  will  have 
a  sponsor  through  the  ages  and  may  defy 
oblivion.  It  would  be  strange  indeed  if  his 
best  work  like  that  of  his  compatriot  and  fel- 
low pagan,  Oscar  Wilde,  should  be  inspired 
by  the  Man  of  Sorrows  and  his  tragic  story. 

For  that  reason  I  devoured  "The  Brook 
Kerith"  and  promised  to  write  about  it  before 
I  had  read  it.  Had  I  known  what  was  in  it,  I 
should  never  have  dreamt  of  writing  about  it. 
It  is  my  custom  to  write  only  of  books  that  I 
love;  the  others — commonplace  or  vulgar  or 
rile — may  all  be  left  as  alms  to  oblivion.     But  I 

120 


had  promised  in  this  case,  and  besides  Moore 
is  an  interesting  person  in  several  respects  and 
"The  Brook  Kerith"  has  been  so  bepraised  on 
all  hands  in  America  that  it  is  almost  a  duty  to 
tell  the  truth  about  it  and  its  innocent  eulogists. 
The  New  York  Times,  of  course,  one  expected 
to  be  fulsome;  but  Mr.  Littell  or  Q.  K.  in  the 
New  Republic  outdoes  the  Times;  he  asserts 
that  "The  Brook  Kerith"  shows  Mr.  Moore  "at 
his  best,"  and  dares  even  to  speak  of  Moore 
"steeping  himself  in  the  earliest  records  and  the 
labors  of  scholars,"  while  "his  curiosity  and  sym- 
pathy created  and  re-created  the  life  of  Jesus  in 
many  forms."  And  then  Q.  K.'s  praise  becomes 
lyrical;  he  speaks  of  the  book  as  "organically 
composed — the  ripening  fruit  of  a  long  preoccu- 
pation," and  so  forth  and  so  on,  in  phrases  that 
would  have  been  overstatements  if  they  had  been 
applied  to  Renan's  "Life  of  Jesus."  And  my 
friend,  William  Marion  Reedy,  is  almost  as  en- 
thusiastic. He  begins  a  four-column  article  with 
"Consummate  artist  in  the  main,  Mr.  George 
Moore  has  a  curious  trick  of  putting  a  smear 
upon  everything  he  touches.  There  are  two  or 
three  such  smears  in  'The  Brook  Kerith'  ..." 
This  seems  more  or  less  sensible.  But  he  con- 
cludes by  wondering  "if  Mr.  Moore's  deluded 
Jesus  is  less  or  more  pathetic  than  our  Biblical 
Jesus,"  which  to  me  is  the  most  extravagant 

121 


praise,  the  most  utterly  preposterous  comparison 
1  have  ever  seen  in  print. 

It  seems  to  me  a  first  principle  that  no  one 
has  any  business  to  write  a  Life  of  Jesus  unless 
he  can  beat  Renan's  and  Renan  took  all  pains 
to  make  himself  worthy  of  his  great  task.     He 
was  a  first  rate  Greek  and  Hebrew  scholar,  a 
life-long  student  of  exegesis,  versed  in  all  the 
minutix  of  German  scholarship.  He  vivified  his 
knowledge,  too,  by  living  in  Palestine  for  years. 
Moreover,  he  was  by  temperament  and  training 
passionately  religious  and  gifted  with  one  of  the 
most  exquisite,   seductive  styles  in  all   French 
prose.    This  priest  and  artist,  student  and  writer 
gave  his  life  to  the  work  of  re-creating  Jesus, 
and  in  my  opinion  and  in  the  opinion  of  others 
better  qualified  to  judge,  he  succeeded — to  a 
certain  extent.     His  life  is  the  best  biography 
of  Jesus  which  has  appeared  since  John,  the  be- 
loved disciple,  finished  his  account.     No  one 
living  is  capable  of  surpassing  Renan's  work; 
the  utmost  a  great  writer  could  do  would  be 
to  mark  the  points  of  difference  or  restrict  him- 
self as  Bernard  Shaw  has  restricted  himself  to 
saying  as  briefly  as  possible  just  what  he  feels 
about  Christ.    I  admit  I  am  prejudiced  against 
Moore's  book  before  I  open  it.    None  the  less, 
he  shall  have  fair  play  if  I  can  give  it  to  him. 

Some  few  years  ago  I  met  Moore  casually  in 
London  and  he  came  to  me  with  much  the  old 

122 


eagerness.  "The  very  man  I  wanted  to  see,"  he 
cried.  **I  have  just  read  your  'Miracle  of  the 
Stigmata' — a  good  story.  Where  did  you  get 
the  idea  that  Jesus  did  not  die  on  the  Cross? 
That's  very  interesting  to  me,  very." 

Moore  had  changed  greatly  in  the  years 
which  had  passed  since  we  last  met;  his  hair  was 
silver,  and  the  wave  of  it  had  receded  a  little, 
leaving  a  noble  expanse  of  brow;  but  the  eyes 
were  nearly  as  young  as  ever  and  the  unwrinkled 
skin  and  the  carmine  flush  on  the  white  cheeks 
would  have  graced  a  girl  of  eighteen.  It  may 
be  the  violent  who  take  Heaven  by  storm,  but  it 
is  the  moderate  who  preserve  their  hair  and 
health!  Moore  had  grown  a  little  more  podgy 
than  aforetime ;  but  he  has  height  to  carry  it  oflF, 
and  he  really  looked  venerable  with  his  crown 
of  silver  hair.  The  moment  he  began  to  speak  I 
remarked  his  gestures  with  the  white  expressive 
fingers.  He  was  the  old  Moore  all  right,  and, 
as  usual,  was  hugely  interested  in  what  he  was 
saying. 

"I'm  glad  you  liked  my  story,"  I  remarked, 
and  was  about  to  move  on  when — 

"I  want  to  talk  to  you  about  it,"  he  insisted. 
"I  think  you  missed  a  great  opportunity,  a 
unique  opportunity  [the  fingers  made  little 
graceful  whorls  before  my  eyes].  You  should 
have  made  Paul  meet  Jesus;  that's  the  drama, 
you  understand — " 

123 


As  Moore  has  again  and  again  tried  and  failed 
to  write  a  drama  that  would  keep  the  stage  a 
week,  I  smiled. 

"Why  don't  you  write  it?"  I  said  and  again 
tried  to  get  away. 

"I  think  of  doing  it,"  he  said  gravely.  "It's 
a  great  idea.  I  don't  want  anyone  else  to  ex- 
ploit it  first;  but  I  can't  make  up  my  mind 
whether  to  write  a  play  or  a  book  about  it." 

"Why  not  both?"  I  rejoined  politely,  "but 
now  you'll  forgive  me.   ..." 

"Surely  you  see,"  he  went  on,  buttonholing 
me,  "that  it  is  a  great  moment;  Paul  and  Jesus 
talking  of  Christianity;  it  must  end  by  Paul 
striking   Jesus    down,    killing    him  I — a    great 


scene." 


"Write  it,  my  dear  fellow!"  I  exclaimed; 
"but  I  must  be  getting  on,"  for  really  I  wasn't 
interested  enough  even  to  tell  him  that  Jesus 
was  crucified  fifteen  years  or  so  before  Saul  was 
converted  on  the  road  to  Damascus. 

"You  don't  seem  interested,"  he  cried  in  as- 
tonishment.    "It's  surely  a  great  scene?" 

"Possibly,"  I  replied,  "but  I  confess  that  idea 
of  yours  leaves  me  cold." 

"But  I'll  make  Jesus  live,"  he  exclaimed,  "I'll 
make  him  real.   ..." 

It  seemed  to  me  that  he  did  not  know  what  he 
was  talking  about.  He  could  no  more  recreate 
Jesus  than  swallow  Mont  Blanc,  and  when  I 

124 


thought  of  his  utter  want  of  reading  or  knowl- 
edge; his  lack  of  historic  imagination,  I  could 
only  smile.  Anatole  France  has  historic  imag- 
ination and  vast  reading ;  but  the  task  would  be 
too  big  for  him,  as  it  was  too  big  for  his  master, 
Renan.    But  Moore — 

France  always  says  he  never  reads  his  con- 
temporaries because  he  must  know  all  their 
ideas,  being  of  the  same  time ;  but  Moore  knows 
only  half  a  dozen  modern  Frenchmen.  The 
East  and  its  customs  are  as  completely  incom- 
prehensible to  him  as  a  cuneiform  inscription, 
and  pagan  as  he  is,  a  pagan  taught  by  Gautier,  he 
could  no  more  realize  Jesus  than  make  pictures 
of  the  fourth  dimension.  I  turned  to  leave  him. 
It  was  useless  talking. 

"Please  tell  me  before  you  go,"  he  persisted, 
"where  you  got  the  idea  that  Jesus  didn^t  die 
on  the  cross.    That  interests  me  enormously. . . ." 

"Jesus  is  said  to  have  died  in  a  few  hours,"  I 
said.  "That  astonished  even  Pilate  and  so  I 
thought—" 

"Oh,"  cried  Moore,  disappointed.  "It's  only 
a  guess  of  yours;  but  why  take  him  to  Cesarea?. 
Why  bring  Paul  there?    Why  .,  .    .  ?" 

I  knew  he  was  merely  informing  himself  in 
his  usual  dexterous  way,  so  tried  to  cut  him 
short. 

"An  early  tradition,"  I  cried;  "my  dear  fel- 
low, an  early  tradition,"  and  ever  since  Moore 

125 


has  talked  about  this  "early  tradition,"  though 
it  would  puzzle  him  to  say  where  it's  to  be 
found.  ^ 

In  due  time  Moore  wrote  his  half-play,  half- 
story,  "The  Apostle,"  and  published  it. 

In  "The  Apostle,"  which  is  half  scenario, 
half  drama,  and  suffers  from  hurried  writing, 
Moore  makes  Paul  strike  Jesus  down  and  kill 
him. 

He  told  me  a  year  or  two  later  that  he  could 
not  understand  the  cold  reception  given  to  this 
playlet;  he  still  thought  his  idea  "wonderful — 
intensely  dramatic" — and  his  fingers  beat  in  the 
conviction. 

All  this  made  me  curious  about  "The  Brook 
Kerith":  had  Moore  changed  his  point  of  view? 
— I  wondered.  Could  he  have  become  a  con- 
vert to  Christianity?    Impossible. 

Strange  to  say,  however,  the  best  book  he  has 
written  is  "The  Confessions,"  and  about  the  best 
pages  in  it  are  those  inspired  by  the  story  of 
Jesus.  Moore,  copying  his  master,  Gautier,  pro- 
fesses to  hate  the  Crucified  One  and  gives  his 
reasons;  here  are  some  of  them: 

"Pity,  that  most  vile  of  all  vile  virtues,  has 
never  been  known  to  me.   .    .    . 

"Hither  the  world  has  been  drifting  since  the 
coming  of  the  pale  socialist  of  Galilee;  and  this 
is  why  I  hate  Him  and  deny  His  divinity.   .    .    . 

"Poor  fallen  God!  I,  who  hold  nought  else 
126 


pitiful,  pity  Thee,  Thy  bleeding  feet  and  hands, 
Thy  hanging  body;  Thou  at  least  art  pictur- 
esque, and  in  a  way  beautiful  in  the  midst  of  the 
somber  mediocrity  towards  which  Thou   hast 
drifted  for  two  thousand  years,  a  flag;  and  in 
which  Thou  shalt  find  Thy  doom  as  I  mine;  T, 
who  will  not  adore  Thee  and  cannot  curse  Thee 
now.    For  verily  Thy  life  and  Thy  fate  has  ( !) 
been  greater,  stranger  and  more  Divine  than  any 
man's  has  been.    The  chosen  people,  the  garden, 
the  betrayal,  the  crucifixion,  and  the  beautiful 
story,  not  of  >Mary,  but  of  Magdalen.    The  God 
descending  to  the  harlot!    Even  the  great  pagan 
world  of  marble  and  pomp  and  lust  and  cruelty, 
that  my  soul  goes  out  to  and  hails  as  the  grandest, 
has  not  so  sublime  a  contrast  to  show  us  as  this." 
Moore  goes  on  to  praise  injustice  and  declare 
that  the  torture  of  the  weak  adds  to  his  pleasure 
in  life.    This  extravagance  may  be  a  Sadie  pose; 
but  one  could  almost  assert  that  the  mere  writ- 
ing of  it  showed  how  unfit  Moore  was  to  at- 
tempt a  Life  of  Christ. 

A  word  or  two  here  about  the  "Apostle"  will 
be  permitted  me.  It  is  a  drama  in  three  acts 
with  a  prefatory  letter  by  the  author  "on  read- 
ing the  Bible  for  the  first  time." 

In  this  letter  Moore  has  done  me  the  honor  of 
travestying  my  picture  of  Paul  in  "The  Miracle 
of  the  Stigmata"  by  adding  unknown  and  dis- 
cordant details.     My  portrait  of  Paul's  appear- 

127 


ance  was  taken  from  tradition.  Paul  was  a 
short  man,  bald  and  bearded.  Moore  has  alter- 
ed it  by  giving  him  "dark  curly  hair"  and  add- 
ing "some  belly  under  his  girdle."  In  "The 
Brook  Kerith"  Moore  is  better  advised;  he 
makes  Paul  bald,  but  still  sticks  to  the  paunch. 
Those  who  think  that  Paul's  daemonic  energy, 
passionate  emotion  and  contempt  for  the  lusts  of 
the  flesh  find  fitting  symbol  in  obesity  will  admire 
Moore's  daring.  Moore  goes  on:  "Sometimes 
Paul  appears  with  his  shirt  open  and  there  is  a 
great  shock  of  curled  hair  between  his  breasts 
and  his  reddish  hand  goes  there  and  he  scratches 
as  he  talks."  After  painting  this  picture  Moore 
pauses  "to  wonder  if  Paul  has  ever  been  seen  by 
any  man  as  clearly  as  he  has  been  by  me."  And 
later  still  he  hopes  that  all  faults  will  be  par- 
doned him  "for  the  sake  of  my  portrait  of  Paul." 
But  this  portrait  is  the  portrait  of  some  dirty 
monk.  Is  Moore  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  the 
Jews  made  cleanliness  a  part  of  their  ceremo- 
nial? They  washed  not  only  the  hands  but  the 
feet  before  meals.  In  the  Talmud  they  were 
taught  that  a  stain  on  the  dress  of  a  teacher  was 
disgraceful.  Even  Moore  should  know  that 
Christian  contempt  of  the  body  did  not  lead  to 
uncleanness  and  dirty  clothing  till  a  century  or 
so  after  the  death  of  Christ.  The  cult  for  dirt 
of  person  and  raiment  sprang  up  in  Alexandria 
in  the  second  century. 

128 


Yet  this  so-called  portrait  of  Paul  is  surpassed 
in  childish  caricature  by  the  portrait  of  Jesus  in 
"The  Brook  Kerith." 

The  Christ  that  walks  through  Moore's  pages 
is  a  man  of  unclean  physical  habits.  On  page 
122  we  are  told  that  Joseph  did  not  recognize 
Jesus  as  he  passed,  "so  unseemly  were  the  ragged 
shirt  and  the  cloak  of  camel's  or  goat's  hair  he 
wore  over  it,  patched  along  and  across,  one  long 
tatter  hanging  on  a  loose  thread.  It  caught  in 
his  feet,  and  perforce  he  hitched  it  up  as  he 
walked"  and  Joseph  remembered  that  he  looked 
upon  the  passenger  as  "a  mendicant  wonder- 
worker on  his  round  from  village  to  village." 

Mr.  Moore  has  no  warrant,  Biblical  or  pro- 
fane, for  his  presentation  of  Christ  as  a  com- 
pound of  ragged  Hindoo  fakir  and  verminous 
Thomas  ^  Becket.  In  the  Jewish  religion,  holi- 
ness and  cleanliness  were  inexorably  knit  to- 
gether, as  witnessed  by  innumerable  passages  in 
the  Talmud,  Mishna  and  Zohar,  and  the  tradi- 
tions and  life  stories  of  saints.  Among  Jews,  the 
teacher,  whatever  his  shade  of  heterodoxy,  is  al- 
ways a  man  of  scrupulous  cleanliness  and  cere- 
monious raiment. 

But  Moore  has  done  worse  than  make  the 
clean  dirty.  The  chief  characteristic  trait  of  the 
East  from  Cabul  to  Carthage  is  the  reverence 
shown  to  teachers  and  healers.  As  soon  as  a 
man  begins  to  teach,  gifts  are  showered  on  him 

129 


by  those  who  have  won  spiritual  encouragement 
from  him,  and  that  Jesus  was  followed  with 
deepest  reverence  is  certain.  Men  left  their  life- 
long occupation  at  his  bidding;  it  was  an  honor 
to  be  numbered  among  his  disciples.  If  Moore 
had  ever  read  of  his  entrance  into  Jerusalem  he 
would  have  had  an  inkling  of  the  way  he  was 
treated.  They  took  a  young  ass  and  put  their 
clothes  on  it  for  him  to  sit  on,  and  "a  very  great 
multitude  spread  their  garments  in  the  way; 
others  cut  down  branches  from  the  trees  and 
strewed  them  in  the  way.  And  the  multitudes 
that  went  before  and  that  followed,  cried,  say- 
ing, Hosanna  to  the  Son  of  David ;  Blessed  is  He 
that  Cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord;  Hosanna 
in  the  highest." 

Reverence  for  spiritual  teachers  is  the  one  gift 
of  the  East  to  the  West — the  chiefest  lesson 
which  we  have  yet  to  learn. 

And  this  reverence  showed  itself  in  all  sorts 
of  gifts.  The  costliest  ointment  was  poured  on 
the  feet  of  Jesus  and  even  the  soldiers  after  his 
crucifixion  "cast  lots  for  his  garment,"  for  it  was 
woven  in  one  piece,  we  are  told,  and  could  not 
be  divided.  Evidently  it  was  woven  especially 
for  the  Master  and  by  loving  hands. 

Moore's  so-called  portraits  are  nothing  but 
degraded  and  vulgar  caricatures,  based  on  a 
knowledge  of  monkery,  and  have  no  relation  to 
Paul  or  Jesus  whether  in  outward  appearance 


or  in  spiritual  attribute.  He  makes  Paul  drivel 
like  a  schoolboy;  but  Paul's  words  are  historical. 
His  speech  on  Mars  Hill  in  Athens  just  above 
the  Agora  or  market  place,  to  a  great  crowd 
grouped  below  him,  is  a  masterpiece  of  elo- 
quence. 

And  the  words  Moore  puts  in  Jesus'  mouth 
are  still  more  unworthy  of  Him  who  spoke  as 
never  man  spake.  Our  hearts  do  not  burn  with- 
in us  as  we  read  Moore's  "Jesus,"  save  with  in- 
dignation against  the  writer  who  could  so  defile 
the  most  sacred  of  our  spiritual  possessions; 
Moore  degrades  Jesus  deliberately,  brings  him 
to  his  own  level  by  putting  into  his  mouth  such 
phrases  as  "we  have  fed  (sic) "  in  the  "Apostle." 

Peter  does  not  fare  better  at  his  hands  than 
Paul.  He  calls  Peter  "a  parcel  of  ancient  rudi- 
ments," whatever  that  may  mean. 

Moore  is  as  ignorant  of  Rome  and  Roman 
customs  as  he  is  of  life  in  the  East.  On  page  107 
he  makes  Pilate  run  his  hand  through  his  beard. 
He  would  say  it  was  a  realistic  touch  that  makes 
Pilate  live  to  him.  But  Roman  aristocrats  were 
usually  clean  shaven,  and  a  Roman  official 
among  people  who  wore  beards  as  the  Jews  did, 
would  certainly  be  clean  shaven  as  a  caste-mark 
and  distinction. 

Every  page  in  this  book  is  a  slap  in  the  face 
to  the  student. 

One  Mathias  is  represented  as  being  a  great 
131 


philosopher,  a  thinker  who  meditates  on  the 
nature  of  God — a  seeker  after  wisdom;  yet  he 
tells  us  with  ironical  laughter  "that  the  neigh- 
borhood was  full  of  prophets,  as  ignorant  and  as 
ugly  as  hyenas.  They  live,  he  said,  in  the  caves 
along  the  western  coasts  of  the  Salt  Lake,  growl- 
ing and  snarling  over  the  world,  which  they 
seem  to  think  rotten  and  ready  for  them  to  de- 


vour." 


This  is  not  the  comment  of  a  Jew  thinker  and 
seeker  after  wisdom,  but  of  some  lewd  commer- 
cial traveler  talking  in  a  cafe  of  the  Place 
Pigalle. 

In  the  same  spirit  Mr.  Moore  makes  the 
president  of  the  Essenes  talk  in  a  mixture  of 
Sussex  and  Devon  dialect  with  Moore's  own 
contempt  for  grammar — "I  shall  be  rare  glad." 

Throughout  the  Orient  among  the  Afghans 
and  the  Arabs  as  among  the  Jews  there  is  a  cere- 
monious submission  of  son  to  father;  outward 
observances  of  humility  in  speech  and  bearing 
are  regarded  as  essential  to  family  life.  Moore 
makes  Joseph  poke  fun  at  his  father,  and  the 
father  replies — "At  it,  Joseph,  as  beforetimes, 
rallying  thy  old  father" — which  would  be  an 
offense,  almost  a  crime  in  Jewish  eyes.  But 
Moore's  ignorance  is  like  the  darkness  of  the 
Egyptian  plague;  it  can  be  felt. 

His  pet  word  in  this  book  is  "beforetimes," 
which  should  not  be  used  as  he  uses  it.    He  also 

132 


uses  "whither"  for  "where."  "An  assembly  hall 
whither  the  curators  met.  ...  I  have  come 
thither  hoping  to  find  the  truth  here.  And  from 
thence  he  proceeded."  "From  whence/'  too,  and 
a  dozen  other  blunders  of  the  same  class  down  to 
the  amusing: — "he  might  have  refused  to  serve 
any  but  she." 

But  in  spite  of  all  such  blunders  and  faults 
the  book  might  still  be  an  enthralling  story; 
might  even  be  a  great  and  wonderful  story,  but 
the  marvel  is  that  there  is  nothing  in  it  of  any 
value  or  interest.  No  page  that  rises  above  the 
commonplace;  no  sentence  or  phrase  in  the 
whole  two  hundred  thousand  words  that  I  can 
remember  with  pleasure  or  care  to  quote. 

I  do  not  wish  to  deal  with  Moore  in  a  small 
or  carping  spirit:  I  have  never  spoken  in  favor 
of  learning  in  my  life :  memory  is  but  an  intel- 
lectual wallet  and  is  no  guide  whatever  to  the 
capacity  of  the  mind.  One  can  go  further :  every 
thinker  knows  how  reading  dwarfs  thought,  lead- 
ing you  rather  to  acquire  the  ideas  of  others  than 
develop  the  native  quality  of  your  own  intelli- 
gence ;  but  a  faculty  of  study  is  needful  in  these 
days  and  a  fair  amount  of  knowledge  imperative. 
Especially  in  cases  where  the  historic  imagina- 
tion is  required,  absolute  ignorance  would  han- 
dicap even  genius  out  of  the  race. 

Moore,  however,  must  be  heard  in  his  own 
defense.    Shortly  after  publishing  the  first  part 

133 


of  this  sketch  in  which  I  undertook  to  expose 
some  of  Moore's  ignorances,  I  received  a  letter 
from  him  telling  me  that  for  my  own  sake  I 
had  better  not  make  the  attempt.  And  he  pro- 
ceeds with  a  whole-hearted  belief  in  his  own 
learning  which  it  would  be  a  compliment  to  call 
idolatrous : 

"I  know  that  there  is  nothing  in  The  Brook 
Kerith'  that  you  could  attack  with  success.  You 
seemed  to  think  in  the  article  you  published  that 
I  was  not  acquainted  with  the  subject,  but  I 
knew  myself  to  be  quite  as  well  informed  as 
Renan  and  that  there  was  no  point  at  which  you 
could  strike  with  efifect.  Neither  private  nor 
public  criticism  has  revealed  any  'mistake.'  In 
your  article  you  spoke  of  the  Gospel  of  John  as 
if  you  regarded  it  of  some  value  as  an  historical 
document,  whereas  it  is  as  I  am  sure  you  have 
learnt  since,  a  merely  ecclesiastical  work,  I 
might  almost  say  a  romance,  and  was  certainly 
written  many  years  later  than  the  synoptic  Gos- 
pels, probably  about  a  hundred  years  later.  For 
my  sake,  I  mean  for  the  sake  of  the  publisher, 
I  am  sorry  the  advertised  attack  was  not  deliv- 
ered ;  a  well-directed  attack  would  have  helped 
the  sale.  It  surprised  me,  however,  that  you  did 
not  appreciate  the  tide  of  the  narrative  flowing 
slowly,  but  flowing  always  and  diversified  with 
many  anecdotes  that  heighten  the  interest  of  the 
reader.     I  cannot  but  think  that  I  have  added 

134 


a  prose  epic  to  the  volume  of  English  literature. 
I  don't  much  care  whether  I  have  or  not,  but 
that  is  just  my  feeling." 

That  Moore  should  compare  his  learning  with 
Renan's  makes  me  grin :  the  coupling  of  the  two 
names  is  something  the  French  would  call  "saug- 
renu,"  or  ridiculously  absurd.  And  worse  than 
any  difference  of  knowledge  is  a  difference  in 
mental  stature  of  the  two  men.  Renan  knew  a 
great  man  when  he  met  him ;  Moore  does  not. 

Moore  will  not  study  and  cannot  read  au- 
thorities; yet  he  is  industrious  in  his  own  way. 
His  method  of  writing  is  laborious  in  the  ex- 
treme. Before  beginning  a  book  he  makes  a 
scenario,  divided  into  chapters;  then  he  writes 
the  book  hastily  chapter  by  chapter  putting  in 
all  his  chief  ideas;  finally  he  goes  over  the  whole 
book  re-writing  it  as  carefully  and  as  well  as 
he  can.  He  corrects  the  printed  proofs  me- 
ticulously and  years  after  a  book  has  been  pub- 
lished he  will  take  it  up  again  and  re-write  it 
page  by  page.  He  is  an  artist  in  the  desire  to 
give  perfect  form  to  his  conception.  This  is  his 
religion  and  he  has  served  it  with  hieratic  devo- 
tion. What  I  feel  compelled  to  emphasize  is 
that  his  power  as  a  student  is  below  the  ordinary. 
His  ignorances  are  abyssmal.  He  does  not  even 
now  know  the  tendency  of  the  most  recent  crit- 
icism is  to  give  weight  to  John's  Gospel  in  spite 
of  its  being  a  tract  for  the  times,  and  it  is  seldom 

135 


dated  now  more  than  fifty  years  after  the  Synop- 
tics. In  my  opinion  it  is  of  great  value.  But 
if  Moore  were  asked  offhand  to  translate  synop- 
tic he  would  be  caught  napping;  yet  he  assumes 
an  air  of  authoritative  knowledge  hardly  to  be 
justified  in  a  great  scholar.  Shaw  on  the  other 
hand,  pretends  to  no  special  knowledge  of  the 
subject;  yet  on  this  question  of  the  value  of 
John's  gospel,  he  has  found  reasons  of  his  own 
for  agreeing  with  the  latest  scholarship. 

What  I  want  to  make  plain  is  that  George 
Moore's  ignorance  makes  his  painting  grotesque 
and  his  real  qualities  as  a  writer  are  all  ob- 
scured and  rendered  worthless  by  this  uncon- 
genial task.  Moore's  grip  on  ordinary  life 
makes  all  his  books  more  or  less  interesting. 
There  are  pages  even  in  the  worst  that  one  can 
read  with  some  pleasure,  but  in  "The  Brook 
Kerith"  there  are  no  such  springs  of  sweet 
water.  The  book  is  dull  and  stupid.  And  I  am 
relieved  to  know  that  Bernard  Shaw  agrees  with 
me  in  this  judgment.  I've  just  received  a  letter 
from  him  in  which  he  says : 

"I  read  about  thirty  pages  of  'The  Brook 
Kerith.'  It  then  began  to  dawn  on  me  that  there 
was  no  mortal  reason  why  Moore  should  not 
keep  going  on  exactly  like  that  for  fifty  thousand 
pages,  or  fifty  million  for  that  matter,  if  he  lived 
long  enough  to  sling  the  ink.    This  so  oppressed 

136 


me  that  1  put  the  book  aside  intending,  as  I  still 
intend,  to  finish  it  at  greater  leisure." 

It  is  useless  to  try  to  disguise  it,  I  am  at  the 
opposite  pole  to  Moore.  I,  too,  read  Gautier  in 
Paris  and  pages  of  his  "Mile,  de  Maupin"  still 
stick  in  my  memory;  like  Moore  I  could  boast 
that  "the  stream  which  poured  from  the  side  of 
the  Crucified  One  and  made  a  red  girdle  round 
the  world,  never  bathed  me  in  its  flood."  I,  too, 
"love  gold  and  marble  and  purple  and  bands  of 
nude  youths  and  maidens  swaying  on  horses 
without  bridle  or  saddle  against  a  background 
of  deep  blue  as  on  the  frieze  of  the  Parthenon." 

But  afterwards  I  learned  something  of  what 
the  theory  of  evolution  implies;  realized  that  all 
great  men  are  moments  in  the  life  of  mankind, 
and  that  the  lesson  of  every  great  life  in  the  past 
must  be  learned  before  we  can  hope  to  push  fur- 
ther into  the  Unknown  than  our  predecessors. 
Gradually  I  came  to  understand  that  Jerusalem 
and  not  Athens  is  the  sacred  city  and  that  one 
has  to  love  Jesus  and  his  gospel  of  love  and  pity 
or  one  will  never  come  to  full  stature.  Born 
rebels  even  have  to  realize  that  Love  is  the  Way, 
the  Truth  and  the  Life;  no  one  cometh  unto 
wisdom  but  by  Love.  The  more  I  studied  Jesus 
the  greater  he  became  to  me  till  little  by  little 
he  changed  my  outlook  on  life.  I  have  been 
convinced  now  for  years  that  the  modern  world 
in  turning  its  back  on  Jesus  and  ignoring  his 

137 


teachings  has  gone  hopelessly  astray.  It  has 
listened  to  false  prophets  and  followed  blind 
guides  and  has  fallen  into  the  ditch.  It  must 
retrace  its  steps.  It  must  learn  the  lessons  of 
love  and  pity,  of  gentle  thought  for  others  and 
the  soft  words  that  turn  aside  wrath;  it  must 
subdue  pride  and  cultivate  loving  kindness. 
There  must  be  a  spiritual  rebirth;  we  must  sub- 
mit ourselves  again  like  little  children  to  sit  at 
the  feet  of  the  Master:  all  the  best  lessons  are 
learned  by  Faith. 

And  in  the  light  of  this  belief  how  magical 
the  world  becomes;  it  is  no  longer  a  machine 
shop  or  a  restaurant  but  a  House  Beautiful,  the 
home  and  habitation  of  a  God. 

Those  deep-souled  Jews  were  verily  and  in- 
deed the  chosen  people.  How  poor  all  our 
philosophies  and  sterile  all  our  teaching  in  com- 
parison with  their  wisdom  and  their  insight; 
how  contemptible  and  small  our  achievements 
when  a  Jew  boy  two  thousand  years  ago  by  tak- 
ing counsel  with  his  own  heart  has  made  him- 
self the  master  of  our  destinies.  "There  is  no 
other  way  under  Heaven  by  which  men  can  be 
saved.  .  .  .  Verily  I  say  unto  you  not  one  jot 
or  one  tittle  of  my  word  shall  ever  pass  away." 

What  sublime  assurance  1  And  yet  it  looks 
the  plain  truth  to  us  now.  Shaw  declares  that 
Jesus'  teaching  on  socialism  must  be  followed 

138 


to-day.     Shaw  even   admits  that  Jesus   is  the 
wisest  of  social  reformers. 

There  is  new  hope  for  us  all  in  the  legend  of 
Jesus  and  in  his  world-shaking  success;  hope  and 
perhaps  even  some  foundation  for  faith.  That 
a  man  should  live  in  an  obscure  corner  of  Judaea 
nineteen  centuries  ago,  speak  only  an  insignifi- 
cant dialect,  and  yet  by  dint  of  wisdom  and 
goodness  and  in  spite  of  having  suffered  a  shame- 
ful death,  reign  as  a  God  for  these  two  thousand 
years  and  be  adored  by  hundreds  of  millions  of 
the  conquering  races,  goes  far  to  prove  that  good- 
ness and  wisdom  are  fed  by  some  secret  source 
and  well  up  from  the  deep  to  recreate  the 
children  of  men. 

And  our  modern  theory  is  not  out  of  harmony 
with  much  of  this  belief.  It  appears  to  us  that 
God  is  finding  Himself  through  us  and  our 
growth,  and  especially  through  our  creations  of 
Truth  and  Beauty  and  Goodness — flowers  on  the 
Tree  of  Life,  a  joy  from  everlasting  to  ever- 
lasting. We  too  can  believe  as  Jesus  believed, 
that  virtue  perpetuates  itself,  increasing  from 
age  to  age,  while  the  evil  is  diminishing,  dying, 
and  is  only  relative  so  to  speak,  or  growth  ar- 
rested. And  our  high  task  it  is  to  help  this 
shaping  Spirit  to  self-realization  and  fulfilment 
in  our  own  souls,  knowing  all  the  while  that  the 
roses  of  life  grow  best  about  the  Cross. 

139 


What  a  miraculous,  divine  world.  And  what 
solace  there  is  in  it  for  the  soul,  now  for  many 
years  weary  and  heavy  laden.  I  used  to  say  that 
for  two  centuries  men  have  been  trying  to  live 
without  souls  and  they  have  found  the  way  long 
and  toilsome.  Now  the  soul  will  come  once 
more  to  honor  and  all  the  sweet  affections  of  the 
spirit,  charity  first,  and  forgiveness  and  loving 
kindness.  Our  prisons  will  all  be  turned  into 
hospitals  and 


140 


.M- 


Lord  Dunsany 


LORD  DUNSANY  AND  SIDNEY  SIME 

T  IS  now  many  a  year  since  I  wrote 
that  we  were  living  through  a  rebirth 
of  religion  and  a  renascence  of  art, 
the  most  wonderful  period  in 
recorded  time. 
The  progress  of  humanity  is  like  skating  on 
the  outside  edge :  as  soon  as  the  rhythmic  curve 
of  movement  takes  the  skater  away  from  the  line 
of  progress  forward,  the  swing  to  the  other  side 
is  already  outlined.  The  force  of  individualism 
and  its  self-asserting  separating  tendencies  have 
gone  too  far,  and  everywhere  men  are  drawing 
closer  together  in  nations  and  world-empires. 
As  individualism  may  be  said  to  have  begun  with 
Luther  and  to  have  ended  in  the  doubting  of 
Voltaire,  so  belief  was  born  again  into  the  world 
with  Goethe  and  is  certain  in  time  to  develop 
a  scientific  morality  and  to  bring  hope  back  into 
the  lives  of  men  and  inspire  new  motives  of 
action. 

Symptoms  of  this  rebirth  of  religion  showed 
themselves  sporadically  in  Britain  twenty  years 
ago,  just  as  the  renascence  of  art  came  to  flower 
first  in  France.     Chesterton  entered  the  world 

141 


of  London  with  a  pagan  love  of  life  and  feast- 
ing, but  avowed  himself  from  the  beginning  a 
Christian  with  a  strong  tinge  of  mysticism.  His 
play  "Magic,"  had  more  than  a  success  of  esteem 
in  London;  thoughtful  people  hailed  it  as  a 
symptom  of  the  dawning  light 

It  was  a  comparative  failure  in  New  York,  for 
New  York  is  too  busy  to  think,  and  much  too 
busy  to  play  curiously  with  new  thought.  New 
York  has  made  up  its  mind  that  Christianity  is 
played  out;  New  York  is  too  wise  to  believe  in 
miracles ;  when  chairs  move  on  the  stage  of  their 
own  accord  and  lights  go  out  and  come  in  again 
at  their  own  sweet  will.  New  York  yawns,  all 
unwitting  of  the  fact  that  everything  we  do  or 
think  is  a  miracle  inexplicable,  unspeakably 
mysterious  as  the  rhythmic  movements  of  the 
stars  and  the  strange  currents  sweeping  suns  and 
planets  and  this  solid  earth  itself  to  some  un- 
imaginable bourne.  But  London  took  "Magic," 
and  Chesterton  to  its  heart  of  hearts. 

In  the  same  abrupt  way  one  heard  of  Dunsany 
and  now  and  again,  of  Sidney  Sime  who  con- 
tinues to  illustrate  his  works  with  a  wealth  of 
weird  imagining. 

Dunsany's  play,  "The  Gods  of  the  Mountain," 
was  produced  in  the  Haymarket  Theatre  when 
Herbert  Trench,  the  poet,  was  manager  and 
Lord  Howard  de  Walden,  also  a  poet,  but  enor- 
mously rich,  was  the  financier. 

142 


It  took  London  by  storm,  which  simply  shows 
what  a  wonderful  capital  London  is,  for  the 
play  has  dreadful  faults,  as  we  shall  see  later. 

And  then  Dunsany  tales  and  Dunsany  plays 
were  on  every  table  and  here  and  there  an  artist 
spoke  of  Sime  as  one  of  the  master  painters  of 
the  time.  I  knew  Sime  long  before  I  saw 
Dunsany;  in  fact,  I  first  heard  of  Dunsany's 
genius  from  Sime. 

The  first  time  I  saw  Dunsany  was  the  first 
night  of  "The  Gods  of  the  Mountain"  in  the 
early  summer  of  1911:  a  sympathetic  appear- 
ance; very  tall,  over  six  feet;  very  slight  with  a 
boyish  face,  rather  like  Dowson's,  but  with 
power  in  the  strong  chin  and  long  jaw.  The 
nose,  too,  slightly  beaked — a  suggestion  of  the 
Roman  or  aristocratic  type,  but  combined 
with  the  sensitive  lips  and  thoughtful  eyes  of 
the  poet;  the  manner  and  voice,  too,  were  re- 
assuring. He  was  more  courteous,  amiable, 
than  an  Englishman  ever  is,  with  a  boyish  frank- 
ness and  joy  in  praise  and  superb  Celtic  blue 
eyes  that  were  reflective  and  roguish,  piercing  or 
caressing — all  in  a  minute — speed  here  and 
strength  and  joy  in  living. 

But  now  what  has  he  done? 

"The  Gods  of  the  Mountains"  is  much  his 
finest  work  as  yet  and  a  study  of  it  shows  his 
strength  and  weakness  to  perfection.  The  first 
performance  made  an  extraordinary  impression 

143 


on  me  and  I  wrote  of  it  the  same  week,  in  the 
London  "Academy,"  as  "one  of  the  nights  of 
my  life." 

A  few  years  later  Chesterton's  "Magic"  had 
an  even  greater  effect  on  me;  because  it  was  a 
consistent  whole  and  worked  up  crescendo  to  a 
climax  whereas  "The  Gods  of  the  Mountain" 
fizzled  out  in  the  last  act  into  the  weakest  melo- 
drama. 

The  entrance  of  the  Gods  as  green  men  in 
armor  or  stone  as  tragic  Fates  was  simply 
ludicrous. 

How  then  should  the  play  have  finished? 

I  ventured  to  suggest  another  ending  at  the 
time  and  I  shall  lay  it  before  my  readers  now 
with  confidence  for  in  the  meantime  some  of 
those  whose  judgment  in  such  matters  counts, 
have  approved  it. 

Think  of  the  position.  Here  are  seven  beg- 
gars who  by  the  sheer  genius  of  one  of  their 
number,  Agmar,  have  caused  themselves  to  be 
received  by  the  citizens  of  a  great  town  as  their 
gods.  Their  authority  is  still  insecure.  There 
are  doubters  in  the  city;  sceptics  even;  but  the 
vast  majority  treat  the  beggars  as  gods  and  give 
them  whatever  they  desire. 

Suddenly,  I  think,  one  of  the  beggar-gods 
should  die?  How  explain  that  to  the  citizens? 
True  gods  don't  die.  Agmar  must  turn  the  diffi- 
culty into  an  advantage.     He  should  announce 

144 


the  fact  to  the  citizens  and  warn  them  solemnly 
to  get  rid  of  the  doubters  and  sceptics.  "It  is  the 
disbelief  of  man,"  he  must  say,  "that  kills  the 
gods." 

The  citizens  immediately  seize  the  chief  in- 
fidels and  execute  them:  "How  can  we  hope 
for  benefit  from  our  gods  when  you  insult  them 
with  your  doubts?" 

And  so  the  beggar-gods  have  a  reprieve  and 
live  happily  for  a  time. 

But  at  length  Fate  plays  them  the  worst  trick. 

One  morning  their  leader,  Agmar,  is  found 
dead  and  they  come  together,  livid  with  fear, 
for  how  shall  they  explain  that  their  chief  is 
mortal? 

Some  counsel  flight:  Ulf  chants  his  old  song 
of  fear  and  boding  when  suddenly  Slag,  who 
was  Agmar's  servant  and  admirer,  is  inspired  by 
a  ray  of  his  master's  genius. 

"There  is  no  need  for  fear,"  he  cries.  "Any 
lie  will  fool  mankind  now.  Had  Agmar  died  in 
the  beginning  we  should  indeed  have  been  lost; 
but  now  faith  in  us  and  our  wonder-working 
powers  is  established;  churches  have  been  built 
to  us;  priests  sing  our  praises;  acolytes  burn  in- 
cense before  our  effigies ;  all  these  will  fight  for 
us  as  for  their  living.  Besides,  young  and  old 
alike  believe  in  us  and  love  us.  There  is  no 
danger  I  tell  you.  We  have  simply  to  say  that 
Agmar  has  returned  to  Olympos  to  make  the 

145 


After-Life  better  for  the  men  and  women  of 
Kongros  and  they  will  all  believe  us.  And  so 
in  turn  as  we  die  each  of  us  will  merely  go  back 
to  the  Heavenly  City  to  prepare  a  place  for  the 
children  of  men." 

No  better  counsel  offering,  Slag  announces 
Agmar's  death  in  this  way,  and  the  people  all 
bow  themselves  before  him  in  reverence  and 
thanksgiving.  "Great  is  Agmar  and  good,  and 
we  thank  our  gods  and  bring  them  rich  gifts." 

This  seems  to  me  the  natural,  inevitable, 
ironical  end. 

In  "The  Gods  of  the  Mountain"  Dunsany  had 
an  inspiration;  but  he  did  not  take  thought  or 
was  lacking  in  patience  and  so  a  fine  conception 
was  only  half  realized. 

Two  other  of  Dunsany's  plays  merit  brief  men- 
tion. "A  night  at  an  Inn"  is  an  excellent  melo- 
drama in  one  act  with  a  real  thrill  in  it  worthy 
of  the  Grand  Guignol  in  Paris;  and  "The  Tents 
of  the  Arabs,"  is  something  more.  The  story  is 
very  simple,  but  memorable  in  Dunsany's  work, 
for  it  is  a  love  story.  The  king  has  left  his 
throne  and  wearisome  state  and  gone  to  the 
desert  and  found  a  gypsy  love: 

King.    Now  I  have  known  the  desert  and 

dwelt  in  the  tents  of  the  Arabs. 

EZNARA.    There  is  no  land  like  the  desert 

and  like  the  Arabs  no  people. 
146 


King.    It  is  all  over  and  done.    I  return 

to  the  walls  of  my  fathers. 

EZNARA.    Time  cannot  put  it  away ;  I  go 

back  to  the  desert  that  nursed  me. 

The  Grand  Chamberlain  comes  to  the  gate 
expecting  the  king  to  arrive.  A  camel-driver 
who  loves  the  city  and  hates  the  desert  claims 
that  he  is  the  king;  but  the  Chamberlain  doubts 
him  till  the  real  king,  drawn  by  his  love,  de- 
clares that  he  has  seen  and  known  the  camel- 
driver  in  Mecca  and  he  is  really  the  king. 

The  Chamberlain  is  convinced.  The  camel- 
driver  goes  in  to  wear  the  crown  while  the  real 
king  returns  to  his  love  and  the  desert. 

It  is  a  pretty  story  charmingly  told.  The  few 
sentences  I  have  quoted  give  us  the  secret  of 
Dunsany's  verbal  magic.  First  of  all,  they  are 
not  prose  at  all,  but  verse:  the  hexameters  are 
clearly  defined. 

But  is  it  wise  thus  to  mix  poetry  with  prose? 
Goethe  does  it  often,  as  Ruskin,  and  Carlyle,  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  and  Jeremy  Taylor  all  did; 
but  in  France,  as  in  Athens,  where  the  prose 
tradition  is  at  its  best,  the  practice  is  condemned. 
Still,  there  it  is.  Dunsany  is  a  poet  and  dreamer, 
and  if  it  is  ever  permitted  to  use  poetry  in  guise 
of  prose  surely  it  should  be  permitted  in  a  love 
story,  for  love  is  nothing  if  not  lyrical. 

It  is  just  as  clear  that  the  mysterious  emotional 
appeal  of  Dunsany's  prose  is  derived  from  the 
Bible.     Each  of  these  verses  has  the  Hebrew 

147 


repetition  in  it;  everyone  remembers  the  much- 
quoted  example :  "Tell  it  not  in  Gath :  talk  not 
of  it  in  the  streets  of  Ascalon." 

I  used  to  wonder  whether  Dunsany  had  copied 
the  biblical  manner  and  vocabulary  wittingly  or 
unwittingly,  and  so  I  wrote  to  him  asking  him 
to  tell  me.    Here  is  his  answer: 

Dunsany  Castle,  Co.  Meath, 
Nov.  3,  '12. 
.    .    .   Please  excuse  dictation  so  I  can  ramble 
reminiscently. 

I  think  I  owe  most  of  my  style  to  the  reports 
of  proceedings  in  the  divorce  court;  were  it  not 
for  these  my  mother  might  have  allowed  me  to 
read  newspapers  before  I  went  to  school;  as  it 
was  she  never  did.  I  began  reading  Grimm  and 
then  Andersen.  I  remember  reading  them  in 
the  evening  with  twilight  coming  on.  All  the 
windows  of  the  rooms  I  used  in  the  house  in 
Kent  where  I  was  brought  up  faced  the  sunset. 
There  are  no  facts  about  a  sunset;  none  are 
chronicled  in  Blue-books.  There  are  no  adver- 
tisements of  them. 

When  I  went  to  Cheam  school  I  was  given  a 
lot  of  the  Bible  to  read.  This  turned  my 
thoughts  eastward.  For  years  no  style  seemed 
to  me  natural  but  that  of  the  Bible  and  I  feared 
that  I  never  would  become  a  writer  when  I  saw 
that  other  people  did  not  use  it. 

When  I  learned  Greek  at  Cheam  and  heard 
148 


of  other  gods  a  great  pity  came  on  me  for  those 
beautiful  marble  people  that  had  become  for- 
saken and  this  mood  has  never  quite  left  me. 

When  I  went  to  Eton  the  housemaid  forgot  to 
call  me,  or  only  half  called  me  rather,  on  the 
morning  of  the  Greek  exam.  I  therefore  took  a 
lower  place  than  I  should  have  and  less  than 
three  years  later,  when  I  left  to  go  to  a  cram- 
mer's where  my  education  ceased,  my  knowledge 
of  the  classics  was  most  incomplete.  But  incom- 
plete in  a  strange  way,  for  they  had  implanted 
in  me  at  Cheam  and  Eton  a  love  of  the  classical 
world  of  which  I  knew  almost  nothing. 

And  then  one  day  imagination  came  to  the 
rescue  and  I  made  unto  myself  gods;  and  having 
made  gods  I  had  to  make  people  to  worship 
them  and  cities  for  them  to  live  in  and  kings  to 
rule  over  them ;  and  then  there  had  to  be  names 
for  the  kings  and  the  cities  and  great  plausible 
names  for  the  huge  rivers  that  I  saw  sweeping 
down  through  kingdoms  by  night. 

I  suppose  that  the  back  parts  of  my  head  are 
full  of  more  Greek  words  than  I  ever  knew  the 
meaning  of  and  names  of  Old  Testament  kings. 
Many  an  ode  of  Horace  I  learnt  before  I  knew 
the  meaning  of  a  line  of  it.  I  suppose  that  when 
one  wants  to  invent  a  name,  Memory,  "The 
Mother  of  the  Muses,"  sitting  in  those  lumber 
houses  of  the  mind  that  one  wrongly  calls  "for- 
gotten," knits  together  strange  old  syllables  into 

149 


as  many  names  as  one  needs.  At  least  I  have 
sometimes  traced  resemblance  to  names  known 
long  since  in  some  word  that  I  have  coined  at 
the  time  in  pure  inspiration. 

Nothing  comes  easier  to  me  than  inventing 
names  (except,  perhaps,  myths).  Here  are  some 
of  my  favorites:  Sardalthion,  Thaddenblarna, 
the  citadel  of  the  gods,  and  Perdondaris,  that 
famous  city. 

An  effect  that  the  classics  have  had  on  me  is 
this.  Some  one  will  say  or  I  read  somewhere — 
"as  so-and-so  said  before  the  walls  of  such-and- 
such,"  and  it  will  convey  to  me  with  my  incom- 
plete knowledge  of  the  classics  nothing  but 
wonder,  and  something  of  this  wonder  I  give 
back  to  my  readers  when  I  refer  casually  in 
passing  to  some  battle  or  story  well  known  in 
kingdoms  on  the  far  side  of  the  sunset  and  cities 
built  of  twilight  where  only  I  have  been.    .    .    . 

But  enough. 

Yours  sincerely,  DUNSANY. 

The  stories  and  tales  of  Dunsany  fall  into  a 
lower  class  than  his  plays;  though  studded  here 
and  there  with  very  beautiful  passages  they  are 
usually,  almost  meaningless.  The  truth  is  the 
lack  of  thought  in  Dunsany  becomes  painful  to 
me  on  a  prolonged  reading;  his  originality  is  of 
imagination  or  rather  of  Celtic  fancy  and  rarely 
of  insight.    If  we  go  to  his  belief  we  shall  hardly 

150 


find  an  original  word  in  it,  much  less  an  original 
idea. 

He  contributed  an  article  to  the  "National 
Review"  in  1911  which  was  a  sort  of  rehash  of 
Ruskin  with  here  and  there  an  aphorism  of 
Emerson.  For  instance,  he  condemned  adver- 
tisements in  Ruskin's  own  petulant  way:  "to 
romance  they  seem  the  battlements  of  the  fort- 
ress of  Avarice,"  and  "Romance,"  he  went  on, 
"is  the  most  real  thing  in  life."  He  quarrels 
with  "the  gift  of  matter  enthroned  and  endowed 
by  man  with  life:  I  mean  iron  vitalized  by 
steam  and  rushing  from  city  to  city,  and  owning 
men  as  slaves";  which  is  simply  a  poor  para- 
phrase of  Emerson's: 

"Things  are  in  the  saddle 
And  ride  mankind." 

Dunsany  has  got  a  huge  popularity  because 
he  represents  in  some  degree  the  new  revolt;  but 
his  reputation  is  based  on  too  slight  a  founda- 
tion to  endure;  he  must  do  better  work  than  he 
has  yet  done  if  he  wishes  to  be  of  the  Sacred 
Band  and  stand  on  the  forehead  of  the  time  to 
come.  He  has  been  terribly  handicapped  by  his 
name  and  position;  true,  he  had  the  good  luck 
to  be  brought  up  on  the  Bible  and  the  fairy  tales 
of  Andersen  and  Grimm;  but  then  he  went  to 
Eton  and  he  is  still  suffering  from  that  infection. 
Eton  made  him  an  athlete,  it  is  said,  and  taught 
him  to  play  cricket;  but  it  also  taught  him  to 

151 


snee^  at  wbftian's  suffrage  and  to  revere  the 
House  of  Lords. 

At  Eton  he  lost  a  little  of  his  Celtic  kindly 
humane  manners  and  learned  "good  form" ;  in- 
stead of  prizing  Celtic  equality  and  the  King- 
dom of  man  upon  earth,  he  came  to  believe  in 
British  imperialism  and  the  world-devouring 
destinies  of  the  British  Empire. 

As  every  one  knows,  Dunsany  is  an  Irish  peer 
and  yet  he  not  only  went  into  the  English  army 
and  fought  the  Germans:  but  before  that  he  had 
fought  against  the  Boer  farmers  and  quite  lately 
he  fought  in  Dublin  against  his  own  poor  coun- 
trymen and  was  there  grievously  wounded, 
which  should  have  taught  him  sense.  All  this 
imperialistic  foolery  I  put  down  to  his  Eton 
training  and,  of  course,  in  the  last  resort  to  his 
want  of  brains,  just  as  I  attribute  Chesterton's 
wild  abuse  of  the  Hun  to  want  of  education. 
These  are  blunders  that  a  large  mind,  a  mind, 
as  Meredith  used  to  say,  "that  had  travelled," 
could  not  possibly  make. 

Mr.  Sydney  Sime 
Sidney  Sime,  who  illustrates  Dunsany's  books 
and  plays  with  such  singular  ability,  is  a  far  abler 
man  than  the  Irish  lord.  I  should  like  to  repro- 
duce here  one  of  his  imaginative  illustrations, 
for  I  regard  most  of  them  as  extraordinary. 
Sime  is  a  strongly-built  man  of  about  five  feet 
seven  or  eight  with  a  cliff-like,  overhanging, 

152 


tyrannous  forehead.  His  eyes  afe  Superlative, 
grayish  blue  looking  out  under  heavy  brows, 
eyes  with  a  pathetic  patience  in  them  as  of  one 
who  has  lived  with  sorrow;  and  realizes — 

"The  weary  weight  of  all  this  unintelligible  world." 

From  time  to  time  humorous  gleams  light  up 
the  eyes  and  the  whole  face;  mirth  on  melan- 
choly— a  modern  combination. 

Sime  has  had  a  sensational  career.  He  was 
a  collier's  boy  and  worked  more  than  ten  years 
underground ;  yet  he  is  one  of  the  best  read  men 
I  know  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  him  one  of 
the  greatest  of  living  artists.  There  are  some 
paintings  of  his  which  I  would  as  soon  possess 
as  the  best  of  Cezanne  and  in  sheer  imaginative 
quality  his  best  is  without  an  equal  in  modern 
work. 

There  is  no  lack  of  thought  in  Sime.  His  im- 
agination and  his  mentality  are  in  perfect  equi- 
poise; nearly  all  his  paintings  have  that  curious 
economy  of  detail  coupled  with  grandeur  of  de- 
sign, which  is  the  hall-mark  of  the  great  masters. 

And  withal  the  man  is  simplicity  itself;  he 
meets  lord  and  ploughman  in  the  same  human 
way;  he  has  had  a  dreadfully  hard  struggle  and 
yet  he  is  as  sunny-tempered  and  optimistic  as  a 
boy.  He  is  for  the  workman  without  ostenta- 
tion ;  yet  the  moment  he  begins  to  speak  you  re- 
alize that  he  sees  the  master's  side,  too — a  singu- 
lar and  powerful  personality. 

153 


I  feel  that  I  have  only  given  sketches  of  these 
two  distinguished  artists.  I  ought  to  be  able  to 
make  Sime's  portrait  at  least  fuller  at  once  and 
more  vivid,  for  I  am  in  most  intimate  sympathy 
with  him.  I  remember  we  had  a  long  talk  once 
about  Blake's  prophetic  writings  and  to  my 
wonder  Sime  took  the  position  I  had  always 
maintained,  that  Blake  is  not  to  be  explained  any 
more  than  a  picture;  you  must  be  content  to 
commune  with  him,  live  with  his  works,  and  in 
time  you  may  absorb  his  influence  which  is  the 
most  precious  thing  he  has  to  give. 

I  got  a  letter  from  Sime  on  this  point  once 
which  I  think  explains  my  admiration  for  his 
insight  and  establishes  my  claims  for  him  as  an 
original  thinker  and  a  master  of  English  prose. 

Let  my  readers  remember  it  is  the  letter  of  a 
great  painter,  a  colorist  as  original  as  Watteau. 

WORPLESDON.TV 

My  Dear  Harris: 

I  hope  I  did  not  convey  any  idea  that  Blake  is 
communicable.  The  interest  of  him  to  me  lies 
in  the  fact  that  he  isn't.  It  is  one  of  my  delusions 
that  there  is  not  any  general  truth  or  value  out- 
side the  perceptive  soul ;  no  intrinsic  values. 

Blake  speaks  like  the  wind  in  the  chimney, 
which  sings  with  all  the  voices  of  all  dead  poets 
and  always  sings  the  heart's  desire  without  the 
bondage  of  words.  The  commentators  will  try 
in  vain  to  pigeonhole  Blake  as  thev  have  failed 

154 


with  others,  but  they  will  throw  their  obfuscat- 
ing mildew  around  his  dim  and  unfinished  state- 
ment without  shame. 

Blake  told  his  friend  Butts  that  he  was  bring- 
ing a  poem  to  town  and  what  he  meant  by  a 
poem  was  a  work  that  intrigued  and  allured  and 
satisfied  the  imagination  but  utterly  confounded 
and  bewildered  the  corporeal  sense. 

We  go  to  embark  at  Naples  and  thence  our 
course  lies  eastwards  and  as  I  am  neither  captain 
nor  owner,  it  is  unlikely  that  I  may  make  the 
ship  swim  where  I  may  please;  but  your  offer 
of  hospitality  and  entertainment  at  Nice  is  none 
the  less  most  grateful. 

People  who  delight  in  doing  kindnesses  make 
the  world  a  pleasant  place.  I  have  known  you 
only  a  little  time,  but  that  time  is  crowded  with 
real  human  friendliness;  if  I  do  receive  any  ap- 
pointment in  Hell,  as  I  may  hope  to,  I  will  do 
my  utmost  to  save  a  cool  corner  for  you. 

Yours  sincerely,    SIDNEY  H.  SiME. 

I  want  to  make  my  readers  feel  as  I  feel,  that 
Sime  is  a  big  man — an  intellectual  force — and 
so  I  look  at  him  in  terms  of  the  time.  I  should 
as  soon  expect  Shaw  to  talk  truculent  nonsense 
about  the  Germans  as  Sime.  Though  I  imagine 
Sime  does  not  know  a  word  of  German,  his  na- 
tive brains  would  long  ago  have  taught  him  the 
true  meaning  of  the  great  fight  the  Germans 
have  put  up  against  what  appeared  to  most  men 

155 


overwhelming  odds.  Sime  would  feel  at  once 
that  such  courage  and  such  efficiency  must  be 
based  on  virtue  and  not  on  any  "preparedness," 
which  would  hardly  last  through  one  year  of 
warfare.  Sime  is  one  of  those  rare  men  who  do 
not  let  themselves  be  cheated  by  words — a  pity 
there  are  not  more  of  them  in  every  nation.  We 
should  then  stand  a  better  chance  of  peace — 
peace  without  victory — which,  if  we  only  knew 
it,  is  the  ideal. 

One  story  must  still  be  told  to  Lord  Dunsany's 
credit  before  I  part  with  him. 

In  a  South  coast  bathing  resort  the  cry  went 
up  one  morning  that  a  man  was  drowning. 

A  big  policeman  had  ventured  into  the  break- 
ers after  a  southwest  gale  and  was  sinking.  Dun- 
sany  happened  to  be  strolling  on  the  beach.  He 
pulled  off  his  coat  and  boots  and  rushed  into  the 
surf.  In  five  minutes  he  brought  the  policeman 
safe  to  shore.  The  crowd  gathered  round  him 
cheering;  everybody  wanted  to  know  his  name, 
but  he  tore  himself  away,  refusing  to  name  him- 
self, and  trotted  off  to  change  his  wet  clothes. 
Some  one  recognized  him  and  told  the  story. 

This  must  be  put  down  on  the  credit-side  as 
the  virtue  of  his  imperialism. 

The  story  delights  me!  What  great  spirits 
we  have  known  and  noble  when  such  men  as 
these  do  not  stand  out  like  steeples.  For  take 
him  as  you  please;  berate  his  shortcomings  as 

156 


you  will,  Dunsany  is  another  Sidney,  Sidney  with 
soul  all  aflame  for  love  of  honor  and  high  deeds 
to  their  own  music  chanted,  and  Sime  the  collier 
lad  might  stand  level-browed  before  Rembrandt 
himself,  being  of  the  same  royal  lineage.    And 
there  they  pass  in  London  streets  and  go  up  and 
down,  unknown  and  unappreciated.   When  they 
are  dead  and  gone,  men  will  probably  crown 
them  and  do  them  tardy  reverence  and  wonder 
about  them  and  form  legends  of  their  sayings 
and  doings,  and  thus  they,  too,  shall  have  their 
part  in  making  the  land  that  bore  them,  memor- 
able and  of  high  repute.    They  both  know  the 
truth  of  the  poet's  supreme  solace: 
"Others,  I  doubt  not,  if  not  we, 
The  issue  of  our  toils  shall  see; 
Young  children  gather  as  their  own 
The  harvest  that  the  dead  have  sown, 
The  dead  forgotten  and  unknown." 


157 


JAMES  THOMSON :  AN  UNKNOWN 
IMMORTAL 

HERE  is  an  old  story  that  tells  how 
a  man  went  about  without  a  shadow 
and  what  a  sensation  the  loss  caused 
when  it  was  discovered.  For  the 
greater  part  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  majority  of  men  went  about  without  souls  in 
drear  discomfort,  yet  they  only  realized  their 
loss  when  it  was  pointed  out  to  them  by  poets  and 
idealists.  Every  one  had  got  drunk  with  greed 
and  was  mad  to  get  rich;  the  things  of  the  spirit 
were  thrust  aside;  the  soul  ignored. 

Karl  Marx  proved  in  "Das  Kapital"  that 
working  men,  women  and  children  were  never 
so  exploited  as  towards  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  in  the  factories  of  England ;  mere 
wage  slaves  they  were,  worse  treated  than  they 
would  have  been  had  the  employers  owned  them 
body  and  soul ;  for  then  at  least  they  would  have 
been  fed  and  housed  decently. 

The  poets  were  naturally  the  first  to  revolt 
against  the  sordid  life  of  capitalistic  exploita- 
tion. Hood's  "Song  of  the  Shirt"  and  "One 
More  Unfortunate"  were  the  lyrics  of  that  sad 
time  when  men  "wore  the  name  of  freedom  grav- 
en on  a  heavier  chain." 

158 


% 


''_  "",  "XT'     '   .•;- 


James  Thomson 


The  greatest  poets  were  in  all  countries  the 
most  convinced  pessimists;  Leopardi  in  Italy, 
Heine  in  Germany  and  Thomson  in  England. 
Their  souls  had  been  maimed  and  wounded  in 
the  squalid  struggle. 

Thomson  interested  me  very  early  by  what 
seemed  pure  chance.  In  1874  or  thereabouts 
Charles  Bradlaugh  spoke  in  Lawrence,  Kan., 
and  though  not  so  good  a  speaker  as  IngersoU 
made  an  even  deeper  impression  on  me  by  dint 
of  force  of  character  and  personality.  I  began 
reading  "The  National  Reformer"  and  soon 
noticed  "jottings"  by  "B.  V.,"  which  excited  my 
curiosity  and  admiration.  One  day  I  came  across 
the  first  verses  of  "The  City  of  Dreadful  Night" ; 
the  title  appealed  to  me  and  the  poem  make  a 
tremendous  impression  on  me:  I  was  young  and 
had  not  found  my  work  in  life. 

The  weary  weight  of  this  unintelligible  world 
lay  heavy  on  me  and  the  builded  desolation  and 
passionate  despair  of  Thomson's  poem  took  com- 
plete possession  of  my  spirit.  Verse  after  verse 
once  read,  printed  itself  in  my  brain  unforget- 
tably; ever  since  they  come  back  to  me  in  dark 
hours,  and  I  find  myself  using  them  as  a  bitter 
tonic.  Take  such  a  verse  as  this : 
"The  sense  that  every  struggle  brings  defeat 

Because  Fate  holds  no  prize  to  crown  success; 
That  all  the  oracles  are  dumb  or  cheat 

Because  thev  have  no  secret  to  express; 
159 


That  none  can  pierce  the  vast  black  veil 

uncertain 
Because  there  is  no  light  beyond  the  curtain ; 
That  all  is  vanity  and  nothingness." 
Such  words  sink  deep  into  the  heart  as  meteors 
into  the  earth  dropped  from  some  higher  sphere. 
Or  this: 

'^We  do  not  ask  a  longer  term  of  strife, 

Weakness  and  weariness  and  nameless  woes ; 
We  do  not  claim  renewed  and  endless  life 
When  this  which  is  our  torment  here  shall 
close, 
An  everlasting  conscious  inanition! 
We  yearn  for  speedy  death  in  full  fruition, 

Dateless  oblivion  and  divine  repose." 
That  "dateless  oblivion  and  divine  repose" 
sings  itself  in  my  memory  still  with  an  imperish- 
able cadence.  Almost  every  verse  of  this  long 
poem  has  the  same  high  finish;  it  would  puzzle 
one  to  find  a  weak  stanza.  Every  mood  of  sad- 
ness has  its  perfect  expression. 

"We  finish  thus ;  and  all  our  wretched  race 
Shall  finish  with  its  cycle,  and  give  place 

To  other  beings,  with  their  own  time-doom; 
Infinite  aeons  ere  our  kind  began ; 
Infinite  aeons  after  the  last  man 
Has  joined  the  mammoth  in  earth's  tomb  and 

womb." 
That  "tomb"  and  "womb"  has  always  repre- 
sented to  me  the  clods  falling  on  the  coffin  I 

160 


And  here  is  the  intellectual  recognition  of  the 
appalling  truth : 
"I  find  no  hint  throughout  the  Universe 
Of  good  or  ill,  of  blessing  or  of  curse; 

I  find  alone  Necessity  Supreme; 
With  infinite  Mystery,  abysmal,  dark, 
Unlighted  ever  by  the  faintest  spark 
For  us  the  flitting  shadows  of  a  dream." 
After  living  in  that  terrible  "City"  for  weeks 
I  dug  up  a  good  many  of  Thomson's  translations 
and  critical  essays  and  found  everywhere  the 
same  masculine  grasp  of  truth  and  deep  compre- 
hension of  all  high  gifts  and  qualities.     A  critic's 
value  is  not  to  be  gauged  by  his  agreement  with 
the  established  estimates  of  great  men,  but  by  the 
degree  in  which  he  can  enlarge  and  enrich  these 
secular  judgments  of  humanity.     And  if  he  can- 
not rise  to  this  height  he  should  be  esteemed  for 
the  alacrity  with  which  he  discovers  and  pro- 
claims men  of  genius  neglected  in  his  own  time. 
I  still   remember  the  surprise  I  felt  when 
Thomson  wrote  his  essay  on  "The  Poems  of  Wil- 
liam Blake,"  and  allayed  my  fears  by  beginning 
with  praise  of  the  "magnificent  prose  as  well  as 
poetry"  in  the  book. 

I  don't  set  much  store  on  his  high  and  just 
praise  of  Blake,  for  already  Dante  Rossetti,  at 
least,  if  not  Swinburne,  had  been  before  him  in 
appreciation,  but  when  he  wrote  on  the  "Impro- 
visations from  the  Spirit,"  by  Garth  Wilkinson, 

161 


Thomson  had  no  forerunners,  to  my  knowledge, 
yet  his  understanding  is  just  as  complete  and  his 
eulogy  as  finely  balanced.  He  wrote  about  Wil- 
kinson's work  as  "A  Strange  Book" ;  he  does  not 
for  a  moment  accept  his  mysticism  and  again  and 
again  points  out  that  these  "improvisations" 
might  be  bettered  by  a  little  painstaking  and  self- 
criticism.  On  the  whole,  his  praise  is  more  than 
generous,  though  finely  qualified. 

My  high  esteem  of  Thomson  grew  with  the 
years  so  that  when  I  found  myself  in  London  in 
1881  for  a  holiday  he  was  one  of  the  first  men  I 
wanted  to  meet.  I  had  no  position  at  the  time 
but  felt  that  a  man  who  had  given  his  best  work 
to  "The  National  Reformer"  would,  perhaps,  be 
willing  to  meet  even  an  unknown  admirer.  A 
clergyman  friend  of  mine  knew  Phillip  Bourke 
Marston,  the  blind  poet,  and  told  me  that  he  had 
heard  Marston  mention  Thomson.  One  morning 
I  was  delighted  to  get  a  letter  from  my  friend 
saying  that  if  I  would  come  to  his  rooms  about 
four  that  afternoon  I  should  meet  both  Marston 
and  Thomson,  for  Marston  had  promised  to 
bring  the  great  man. 

Of  course  I  was  on  hand,  and  after  I  had 
talked  to  the  Rev.  John  Verschoyle  for  perhaps 
ten  minutes  and  thanked  him  warmly,  the  two 
poets  came  in.  I  knew  Marston  slightly,  but 
even  while  shaking  hands  with  him  I  was  study- 
ing Thomson.     To  say  I  was  disappointed  gives 

162 


no  idea  of  my  dejection.  I  had  seen  a  photo- 
graph that  represented  him  as  a  man  of  about 
thirty  of  handsome,  almost  noble  countenance; 
courage,  vivacity,  kindness  shone  from  the  well- 
cut  features,  capacious  forehead  and  fine  eyes.  I 
had  got  the  idea,  too,  that  he  was  of  good  height; 
but  he  was  short,  hardly  medium  height,  shrunk- 
en together,  prematurely  aged;  the  face  was 
shrivelled,  small,  the  skin  lined  and  wrinkled, 
the  expression  querulous ;  his  clothes  were  shabby 
and  illfitting;  taken  all  in  all  he  looked  an  old 
wastrel. 

The  contrast  between  this  man  and  his  mag- 
nificent work  was  appalling;  I  could  only  stare 
at  him  and  wonder  for  the  explanation. 

Verschoyle  had  begun  to  talk  of  poetry  with 
Marston  and  now  and  again  Thomson  joined  in 
almost  as  if  against  his  will,  I  thought;  when 
suddenly  he  interrupted  the  talk  irrelevantly 
with  a  sort  of  plaint — "There's  no  drink?" 

"Oh,  I  beg  pardon,"  cried  Verschoyle;  and  at 
once  hastened  to  put  whiskey  and  soda  water  on 
the  table. 

Verschoyle  liked  Marston  and  had  the  preju- 
dices of  a  devout  Christian  and  gentleman,  and 
Thomson  w^as  a  free-thinking  Radical,  so  he  left 
Thomson  to  me  naturally. 

Naturally,  too,  I  filled  Thomson's  glass  as  soon 
as  he  emptied  it  and  refilled  it  every  little  while 
the  stimulant  evidently  doing  him  good. 

163 


Sober  people  are  apt  to  think  that  men  drink 
because  they  like  the  taste.  I  believe  the  idealists 
almost  always  drink  for  the  effect;  it  throws  off 
the  depression  under  which  they  are  apt  to  suffer 
and  brings  them  up  to  their  best  and  fullest  life; 
encourages  and  enables  them  to  show  themselves 
at  their  best.  Drink  is  said  to  induce  suicide; 
it  often  postpones  it. 

Thomson  soon  joined  in  the  conversation ;  the 
tension  about  my  heart  began  to  relax  when  I 
found  that  he  talked  admirably.  Like  all  really 
able  men  he  was  astonishingly  well-read ;  knew 
German  thoroughly  and  Italian  and  French  as 
well,  was  familiar  with  Heine,  Leopardi  and 
Carducci,  names  almost  unknown  in  England 
at  that  time. 

As  the  spirit  took  effect  Thomson  talked  better 
than  I  had  ever  heard  any  one  talk  up  to  that 
time;  the  shrunken  features  seemed  to  fill  out, 
the  voice  rounded  to  music  with  shrill  discords 
of  bitter  sadness ;  the  eyes  now  grey  pools  of  soft 
light;  now  dark  blue,  deep  beyond  deep,  held 
one  enchanted  with  their  play  of  expression;  the 
face  took  on  a  certain  nobility  of  power :  Thom- 
son had  come  into  his  kingdom  and  we  were  his 
thralls.  That  was  the  first  time  I  had  ever  heard 
a  great  poet  talk  of  poetry  and  I  never  forgot  the 
lesson.  Whenever  he  spoke  of  a  poet  he  would 
quote  a  line  or  verse  and  these  were  often  new 

164 


and  always  intensely  characteristic;  a  verse  of 
Shelley  about  music  and  violets;  a  line  of  Keats: 
"There  is  a  budding  morrow  in  midnight." 
Dante  and  Heine  were  enskied  and  sacred; 
Heine  suffering  in  Paris  on  his  mattress  grave, 
like  a  tortured  dog;  was  "a  joyous  heathen  of 
richest  blood,  a  Greek,  a  lusty  lover  of  this  world 
and  life,  an  apostle  of  the  rehabilitation  of  the 
'flesh.'  "  And  Dante  eagle-eyed  suddenly  took 
a  place  apart  of  an  incommunicable  austere  dig- 
nity. 

Thomson  modified  nearly  all  the  accepted 
judgments.  I  was  at  once  delighted  and  disap- 
pointed to  find  that  several  of  my  little  discov- 
eries were  accepted  by  him  as  commonplaces. 
The  golden  nuggets  I  had  found  and  hoarded 
were  only  small  change  to  him.  For  instance  in 
spite  of  Matthew  Arnold  I  could  not  accept 
Byron  as  a  poet  at  all,  and  I  held  that  Browning 
had  produced  tw^enty  times  as  much  high  poetry 
as  Tennyson  and  far  more  even  than  Words 
worth.  Thomson  flashed  agreement  with  all 
this,  but  when  I  went  on  to  say  that  Keats  was  a 
far  greater  poet  than  Shelley  he  dissented  vehe- 
mently and  when  I  asserted  that  Blake's  mystical 
books  were  clear  enough  to  any  good  reader  and 
that  he  was  among  the  greatest  of  the  sons  of 
men,  Thomson  shook  his  head.  On  this  narrow 
line  of  dissent  I  found  refuge  for  my  soul  and 
was  content. 

165 


Nothing  in  Thomson's  talk  surprised  me  so 
much  as  the  rich  gaiety  and  joy  in  living  he  dis- 
covered when  praising  his  favorite  Heine;  his 
own  melancholy  was  evidently  the  souring,  so  to 
speak  of  a  generous  vintage;  "the  first  of  modern 
Pagans,"  he  called  Heine  exultantly:  "The  great- 
est Jew  since  Jesus,  and  a  divine  poet  to  boot." 
"Then  you  don't  think  Jesus  a  poet?"  I  ex- 
claimed. 

"I  mean  by  poet  a  singer,"  he  retorted,  and  so 
I  began  to  understand  how  this  lover  of  music 
came  to  rate  Shelley  so  highly  for  Shelley  cer- 
tainly was  one  of  the  greatest  of  singers. 

Gradually  the  stimulant  died  out  of  Thomson : 
bit  by  bit  the  light  left  his  eyes,  the  furrows  and 
wrinkles  came  back,  the  old  querulous  dejected 
expression  of  his  face  returned.  Marston  got 
up  to  go  and  I  did  not  try  to  make  another  ap- 
pointment. My  time  in  London  was  measured, 
and  feeling  that  Thomson  had  come  to  grief 
when  his  gifts  and  powers  ought  to  have  gained 
him  a  great  position,  depressed  me  dreadfully. 
I  had  no  idea  then  of  the  power  of  British  snob- 
bery and  British  conventions. 

Alone  together,  Verschoyle  and  I  looked  at 
each  other. 

"Why  has  he  lost  hold  on  himself?"  I  asked. 

"Atheists  of  that  class,"  said  Verschoyle, 
"generally  come  to  ruin ;  theyVe  no  backbone  in 
them. 

166 


"I  remember  hearing  a  story  of  Tihomson,'* 
he  went  on.  "Perhaps  I  ought  to  have  told  you. 
The  father,  Dr.  Westland  Marston,  the  literary 
and  dramatic  critic,  you  know?"  I  shook  my 
head).  "Well,  he's  blind,  too,  and  he  told  it  to 
me.  I  think  he  dislikes  his  son  going  about  with 
Thomson.  One  day,  it  seems,  Phillip  Bourke 
Marston  went  to  call  on  Thomson  and  found  him 
wild,  incipient  Delirium  Tremens.  After  a  little 
while  Thomson  got  quieter  and  began  to  follow 
Marston  about  tickling  the  back  of  his  neck  with 
a  carving  knife.  When  Phillip  asked  him  what 
he  was  doing  Thomson  told  him,  but  went  on 
with  the  gruesome  game.  Scared  stiff,  the  blind 
man  tried  to  escape,  but  couldn't  and  was  finally 
rescued  by  the  chance  arrival  of  Rossetti.  A 
ghastly  scene,  eh?" 

"Ghastly,  indeed,"  I  replied;  "a  touch  of  the 
grotesque  in  the  horrible." 

Was  it  the  story  or  the  personal  impression? 
I  can't  say:  somehow  I  felt  that  Thomson  was 
lost.  Was  British  prejudice  to  blame  or  was 
there  any  personal  reason? 

The  thought  crossed  my  mind  that  like  de 
Musset,  Thomson  looked  on  drink  as  the  open 
door  to  death  and  preferred  it  to  any  other.  In 
that  case  why  shouldn't  he  take  it?  I  said  to  my- 
self. There  was  a  fierce  youthful  intolerance  in 
me  at  the  time;  a  great  poet,  it  seemed  to  me, 
should  make  his  life  great:  I  had  no  notion  then 

167 


that  the  burden  is  often  too  heavy  for  mortal 
strength  and  that  sooner  or  later  all  the  sons  of 
Adam,  or,  at  least,  the  most  gifted,  are  sure  to 
reach  the  breaking  point. 

But  Thomson  knew  it  and  had  said  it  in  his 
own  way  in  a  hundred  magical  verses. 

Thomson  was,  perhaps,  the  first  to  tell  us  that 
the  passion  of  the  creative  artist,  the  wish  to  do 
our  work,  to  mould  the  gold  in  us  into  perfect 
form,  is  one  of  the  chief  incentives  to  living: 

"So  potent  is  the  Word,  the  Lord  of  Life, 
And  so  tenacious  Art, 

Whose  instinct  urges  to  perpetual  strife 
With  Death,  Life's  counterpart; 

The  magic  of  their  music,  might  and  light, 

Can  keep  one  living  in  his  own  despite." 
A  year  or  so  later  I  was  staying  at  Argenteuil, 
near  Paris,  when  I  read  of  Thomson's  death, 
and  the  curt  posthumous  notices  showed  that  he 
had  practically  drunk  himself  to  death.  It  was 
at  Phillip  Marston's  rooms  in  the  Euston  Road 
that  the  final  catastrophe  took  place.  He  had 
drifted  in  on  Marston  in  the  afternoon;  had 
talked  of  poetry  and  had  had  some  whiskey. 
Internal  hemorrhage  followed ;  he  was  taken  to 
University  College  Hospital  nearby.  Next  day 
Marston  and  Sharp  visited  him;  he  begged  a 
shilling  for  stamps  to  write  some  letters,  he  was 
literally  without  a  penny,  and  died  the  follow- 
ing day. 

168 


Had  he  done  his  work;  given  all  he  had  to 
give?  I  don't  think  so.  In  spite  of  his  strength 
of  will,  and  it  was  extraordinary,  the  tragic  mis- 
haps and  injustices  of  life  were  too  powerful  and 
had  overborne  the  Titan. 

I  could  give  a  hundred  specimens  of  his  prose 
even  which  would  convince  any  thinking  mind 
that  Thomson  was  one  of  the  choice  and  master 
spirits  of  the  time. 

I  have  not  got  his  volume  "Satires  and  Pro- 
fanities," which  appeared  in  1884  by  me,  but 
here  is  a  passage  I  have  copied  out:  it  will 
suffice : 

"This  great  river  of  human  Time,  which 
comes  flowing  down  thick  with  filth  and  blood 
from  the  immemorial  past,  surely  cannot  be 
thoroughly  cleansed  by  any  purifying  process 
applied  to  it  here  in  the  present;  for  the  pollu- 
tion, if  not  at  its  very  source  (supposing  it  has  a 
source)  or  deriving  from  unimaginable  remote- 
nesses of  eternity  indefinitely  beyond  its  source^ 
at  any  rate  interfused  with  it  countless  ages  back, 
and  is  perennial  as  the  river  itself.  This  im- 
mense poison-tree  of  Life,  with  its  leaves  of 
illusion,  blossoms  of  delirium,  apples  of  destruc- 
tion, surely  cannot  be  made  wholesome  and 
sweet  by  anything  we  may  do  to  the  branchlets 
and  twigs  on  which,  poor  insects,  we  find  our- 
selves crawling,  or  to  the  leaves  and  fruit  on 
which  we  must  fain  feed;  for  the  venom  is 

169 


drawn  up  in  the  sap  by  the  tap-roots  plunged  in 
abysmal  depths  of  the  past.  This  toppling  and 
sinking  house  wherein  we  dwell  cannot  be  firmly 
re-established,  save  by  re-establishing  from  its 
lowest  foundation  upwards.  In  fine,  to  thor- 
oughly reform  the  present  and  the  future  we 
must  thoroughly  reform  the  past." 

But  what  were  the  mishaps  and  injustices  it 
may  be  asked  which  brought  such  splendid 
powers  to  wreck?  The  injustices  were  mainly 
of  the  time  and  place;  the  mishaps  individual. 
His  father  was  an  officer  in  the  merchant  marine 
who  had  the  bad  luck  to  get  a  paralytic  stroke 
in  1840  and  never  recovered;  his  mother  a 
deeply  religious  woman  and  mystic  died  in 
1843,  leaving  James  an  orphan  when  a  child  of 
nine,  to  be  brought  up  as  a  pauper  on  charity; 
not  a  bad  start  for  a  world-poet.  He  studied 
hard  and  became  a  schoolmaster  in  the  British 
army  about  seventeen.  A  Mrs.  Grieg  says  of 
him  at  this  time:  "He  was  wonderfully  clever, 
very  nice-looking  and  very  gentle,  grave  and 
kind."  Stationed  in  Ireland  he  made  a  friend 
of  Charles  Bradlaugh,  then  a  private,  and  fell  in 
love  with  a  beautiful  girl.  Having  won  her 
affection,  he  returned  to  England  at  nineteen  to 
gain  a  better  position  in  order  to  marry  her.  Six 
months  later  she  died  suddenly.  All  through 
his  life  he  ascribed  his  downfall  to  losing  her. 
Almost  the  last  poem  he  wrote  was  written  of 

170 


her  thirty  years  later  under  the  title,  "I  Had  a 
Love."  ("Too  hard  and  harsh,  too  true  to  be 
good  poetry,"  is  Thomson's  comment  on  it.)  I 
quote  one  verse,  for  it  tells  everything: 
"You  would  have  kept  me  from  the  desert  sands, 
Bestrewn  with  bleaching  bones, 
And  led  me  through  the  friendly  fertile  lands, 

And  changed  my  weary  moans 

To  hymns  of  triumph  and  enraptured  love. 

And  made  our  earth  as  rich  as  Heaven  above." 

As  a  young  man  he  was  strong,  we  are  told ;  a 

good  oarsman  and  walker;  he  thought  nothing 

of  walking  from  the  Curragh  Camp  to  Dublin 

and  back  in  the  day,  and  by  all  accounts  was 

very  vivacious  and  an  excellent  companion.     A 

real  student,  too,  he  taught  himself  German, 

Italian,  French  and  a  good  deal  of  Spanish  and 

some  Latin,  etc.     But  even  as  a  young  man  of 

twenty  or  twenty-one,  he  occasionally  drank  to 

excess  in  a  convivial  way,  and  the  evil  tendency 

grew  on  him  as  the  injustices  of  life  began  to  eat 

into  his  pride. 

We  are  told  that  "unfortunately  he  did  not 
get  on  well  with  the  officers."  From  the  fact 
that  he  had  made  Bradlaugh,  though  a  private, 
his  closest  friend,  one  can  imagine  how  the  offi- 
cers would  regard  him.  He  was  always  a  free 
thinker  with  pronounced  radical  views;  natu- 
rally British  officers  were  ready  to  pick  a  quarrel 
with  a  genius  who  assuredly  did  not  share  their 

171 


admiration  of  themselves.  Thomson  was  dis- 
missed from  the  British  army  for  trivial  con- 
tempt called  insubordination  in  1862 — a  heavy 
and  undeserved  blow. 

A  couple  of  years  before  he  had  begun  writing 
for  The  National  Reformer,  which  had  been 
founded  by  Bradlaugh.  Now  at  a  loose  end  he 
came  to  London  and  Bradlaugh  got  him  a  place 
in  a  solicitor's  office;  he  was  still  only  twenty- 
eight.  His  wages  plus  all  he  received  from  his 
writing  hardly  averaged  ten  dollars  a  week  for 
the  next  ten  years  of  his  life,  the  best  years. 
Under  such  conditions  and  conscious  of  great 
powers,  it  was  only  to  be  expected  that  the  mel- 
ancholy he  inherited  from  his  mother  would 
increase.  He  began  periodically  to  drink  to 
excess.  He  fought  a  desperate  battle  with  this 
propensity.  For  months  he  would  be  sober  and 
then  some  setback  in  life  would  excite  his  pessi- 
mism and  he  would  begin  to  brood,  then  to 
drink.  After  the  bout  he'd  "purge  and  live 
cleanly"  again  for  months. 

At  all  times  he  took  his  work  most  seriously 
like  all  who  have  it  in  them  to  do  great  work. 

In  1864  he  had  written  two  or  three  articles 
for  the  Daily  Telegraph;  it  is  said  that  the  edi- 
tor offered  him  a  retaining  fee  "to  write  like 
that,"  and  then  asked  him,  "Can  you  write 
pathos?"  which  ended  their  relation.  Some  of 
his  best  poetry  was  rejected  by  four  or  five  of 

172 


the  chief  magazines.  In  1874  his  great  poem, 
"The  City  of  Dreadful  Night,"  began  to  appear 
piecemeal  in  The  National  Reformer  and  won 
him  new  friends.  Swinburne,  George  Eliot  and 
Meredith  wrote  warmest  praise  to  him,  and 
Bertram  Dobell  grew  really  fond  of  him  and 
helped  him  later  to  publish  his  books.  It 
brought  him  another  friend,  Phillip  Bourke 
Marston,  who  remained,  as  I  have  said,  faithful 
to  the  end. 

In  1875  he  had  a  sort  of  disagreement  with 
Bradlaugh;  was  crowded  out  of  the  paper  and 
the  misunderstanding  was  accentuated,  it  was 
said,  by  Mrs.  Besant,  and  so  the  friendship  of 
twenty  years  came  to  an  end. 

In  "The  City  of  Dreadful  Night"  Thomson 
has  given  us  a  portrait  of  Bradlaugh  speaking 
as  the  pessimist-prophet;  it  is  at  once  a  tribute 
to  his  affection  for  the  friend  and  a  noble  appre- 
ciation of  the  reformer's  high  qualities.  The 
subsequent  quarrel  never  induced  Thomson  to 
withdraw  or  modify  any  part  of  his  eulogy. 

"And  then  we  heard  a  voice  of  solemn  stress 
From  the  dark  pulpit,  and  our  gaze  there  met 
Two  eyes  which  burned  as  never  eyes  burned  yet; 

Two  steadfast  and  intolerable  eyes 

Burning  beneath  a  broad  and  rugged  brow; 

The  head  behind  it  of  enormous  size. 

And  as  black  fir-groves  in  a  large  wind  bow, 

Our  rooted  congregation,  gloom-arrayed, 

By  that  great  sad  voice  deep  and  full  were  swayed : — 

173 


O  melancholy  Brothers,  dark,  dark,  dark! 
O  battling  in  black  floods  without  an  ark! 

O  spectral  wanderers  of  unholy  Night! 
My  soul  hath  bled  for  you  these  sunless  years, 
With  bitter  blood-drops  running  down  like  tears: 

Oh,  dark,  dark,  dark,  withdrawn  from  joy  and  light!" 

From  this  time  on  he  wrote  little  poetry  and 
was  content  to  get  his  prose  accepted  by  the 
Secularist,  a  new  weekly  and  anti- religious 
review  established  by  G.  W.  Foote.  But  his 
chief  source  of  livelihood  came  from  writing 
for  Cope's  Tobacco  Plant,  a  monthly  edited  as 
an  advertising  medium  for  a  firm  of  Liverpool 
tobacco  merchants.  This  is  how  England 
treated  one  of  her  most  gifted  and  greatest  sons. 

At  Christmas,  1878,  he  could  say  that  he  had 
not  earned  a  penny  in  the  year  save  from  his 
papers  in  Fraser's  Magazine,  hardly  two  hun- 
dred dollars  in  all.  At  the  end  of  1879  he  was 
only  writing  for  Cope  "barely  managing  to  keep 
his  head  over  water,  sometimes  sinking  under 
for  a  bit."  Was  it  any  wonder  that  this  gentle, 
genial,  gifted  spirit  grew  tired  of  the  long  strug- 
gle? Again  and  again  in  1879  he  speaks  of 
rheumatic  pains ;  it  is  plain  that  his  health  was 
breaking;  his  "old  friend  insomnia"  too  had 
come  back  again  to  make  night  even  more 
hideous  than  the  day.  He  fell  more  and  more 
completely  under  the  influence  of  drink  and  the 
story  of  the  close  of  Thomson's  life  is  that  of  a 
man  who  had  lost  all  desire  to  live;  "his  later 

174 


life  was  a  slow  suicide,  perceived  and  acquiesced 
in  deliberately  by  himself."  in  1880  Dobell  got 
his  first  book  of  poems  published  in  book  form; 
it  won  him  friends  and  fifty  dollars  in  cash,  as 
poor  Thomson  writes  hopefully.  Meredith  in- 
troduced him  to  editors  and  his  work  began  to 
be  asked  for,  but  the  help  came  too  late.  He 
was  now  forty-six  and,  perhaps,  beyond  saving. 
At  least  it  would  have  needed  some  extraordi- 
nary circumstance  to  have  saved  him.  Mere- 
dith, with  his  preternatural  sagacity,  seems  to 
have  divined  this  after  his  death. 

The  one  gleam  of  brightness  that  came  before 
the  end  intensifies  to  me  the  tragedy  of  the  final 
disaster.  His  second  volume  of  poems  was  pro- 
duced almost  immediately  after  the  first  and  was 
also  successful.  And  these  books  brought  him 
some  new  friends,  among  them  a  Mr.  and  Miss 
Barrs,  brother  and  sister,  who  asked  him  down 
to  stay  with  them  in  the  country.  He  went  to 
them  again  and  again  and  found  perfect  hospi- 
tality; he  seems  indeed  to  have  felt  deeply  for 
Miss  Barrs,  because  on  his  forty-seventh  birth- 
day he  writes  to  H.  A.  B. : 
"When  one  is  forty  years  and  seven 
Is  seven  and  forty  sad  years  old, 

He  looks  not  onward  for  his  heaven, 
The  future  is  too  blank  and  cold, 
Its  pale  flowers  smell  of  graveyard  mould, 

He  looks  back  to  his  lifeful  past; 

175 


If  age  is  silver,  youth  is  gold; — 
Could  youth  but  last,  could  youth  but  last!" 
Then  there  are  the  stanzas  entitled  "At  Bel- 
voir"  with  this  memorable  verse: 
"A  maiden  like  a  budding  rose, 
Unconscious  of  the  golden 
And  fragrant  bliss  of  love  that  glows 

Deep  in  her  heart  infolden ; 
A  Poet  old  in  years  and  thought. 

Yet  not  too  old  for  pleasance. 
Made  young  again  and  fancy-fraught 
By  such  a  sweet  friend's  presence." 
The  poem  entitled  "He  Heard  Her  Sing" 
tells  of  Thomson's  passionate  love  of  music  and 
his  deep  feeling  for  this  lady. 

He  visited  the  Barrs  again  in  the  spring  of 
1882,  but  he  let  himself  go  and  the  visit  ended 
in  a  fit  of  intemperance.  He  crept  back  to  Lon- 
don in  bitterest  remorse  and  final  despair.  On 
April  22,  1882,  we  find  him  writing  to  Mr. 
Barrs: 

"I  scarcely  know  how  to  write  to  you  after 
my  atrocious  and  disgusting  return  for  the  won- 
derful hospitality  and  kindness  of  yourself  and 
Miss  Barrs.    I  can  only  say  that  I  was  mad." 

Very  soon  afterwards  comes  an  unforgettable 
picture  of  him  by  Mr.  Stewart  Ross: 

"He  stands  before  me  now  as  distinctly  as  he 
did  nearly  seven  years  ago  among  the  well- 
dressed  people  at  that  glittering  bar — he,  the 

176 


abject,  the  shabby,  the  waif.  .  .  .  His  figure, 
which  had  always  been  diminutive,  had  lost  all 
dignity  of  carriage,  all  gracefulness  of  gait 
When  the  miserable  hat  was  raised  from  the 
ruined  but  still  noble  head  it  revealed  the  thin- 
ning away  of  the  ragged  and  unkempt  hair, 
deeply  threaded  with  grey.  His  raiment  had 
the  worn,  soiled  and  deeply  creased  aspect  that 
suggested  ...  it  had  been  worn  day  and 
night.  The  day,  for  May,  was  a  raw  and  cold 
one,  with  a  drizzle,  and  the  feet  of  the  author  of 
'The  City  of  Dreadful  Night'  were  protected 
from  the  slushy  streets  only  by  a  pair  of  thin  old 
carpet-slippers,  so  worn  and  defective  that,  in 
one  part,  they  displayed  his  bare  skin." 

The   summing   up   is   given    in   a   letter   of 
Meredith's : 

"He  did  me  the  honor  to  visit  me  twice,  when 
I  was  unaware  of  the  extent  of  the  tragic  afflic- 
tion overclouding  him,  but  could  see  that  he  was 
badly  weighted.  I  have  now  the  conviction 
that  the  taking  away  of  poverty  from  his  burdens 
would  in  all  likelihood  have  saved  him  to  enrich 
our  literature;  for  his  verse  was  a  pure  well. 
He  had,  almost  past  example  in  my  experience, 
the  thrill  of  the  worship  of  moral  valiancy  as 
well  as  of  sensuous  beauty;  his  narrative  poem, 
'Weddah  and  Om-cl-Bonain,'  stands  to  witness 
what  great  things  he  would  have  done  in  the 
exhibition  of  nobility  at  war  with  evil  condi- 
tions.    He  probably  had,  as  most  of  us  have 

177 


had,  his  heavy  suffering  on  the  soft  side.  But 
he  inherited  the  tendency  to  the  thing  which 
slew  him.  And  it  is  my  opinion  that,  in  consid- 
eration of  his  high  and  singularly  elective  mind, 
he  might  have  worked  clear  of  it  to  throw  it 
off,  if  circumstances  had  been  smoother  and 
brighter  about  him."  Such  is  Meredith's  way 
of  saying  that  England  is  a  harsh  stepmother  to 
poets  who  dare  to  be  thinkers  and  radicals 
though  born  poor.     The  true  word  is : 

Father,  forgive  them;  for  they  know  not 
what  they  do. 

It  might  be  well  for  us  to  ask  ourselves  how 
America  treats  her  Thomsons.  The  reception 
accorded  to  Poe  and  Whitman  should  not  flatter 
our  self-esteem. 


Thompson  as  I  saw  him  in  1881, 


178 


Lionel  Johnson 


LIONEL  JOHNSON  and 
HUBERT  CRACKANTHORPE 

T  would  take  long  to  tell  why  these 
two  men  are  associated  in  my  mem- 
ory. I  saw  a  great  deal  of  both  of 
them  about  the  same  time  in  the 
early  nineties;  they  were  both  very 
young  and  full  of  high  promise  in  very  different 
ways,  and  in  both  I  felt  a  certain  weakness  of 
body,  the  premonition  of  untimely  death  and  un- 
fulfilled renown.  They  both  felt  the  danger,  I 
believe,  knew  that  their  hold  on  life  was  tenu- 
ous, weak  and  that  the  strands  would  part  easily 
on  any  strain.    Johnson  wrote  to  a  friend : 

"Go  from  me:  I  am  one  of  those  who  fall. 
What!  hath  no  cold  wind  swept  your  heart  at  all, 
In  my  sad  company?    Before  the  end, 
Go  from  me,  dear,  my  friend!" 

The  "cold  wind" — perhaps  only  the  flighting 
of  unseen  wings — was  sadly  prophetic  in  Crack- 
anthorpe's  case,  but  not  in  Johnson's,  thank  good- 
ness, for  though  he  died  at  thirty-five  he  had 
already  done  excellent  work  in  prose  and  verse 
which  gives  him  a  niche  in  the  sanctuary  of  the 
spirit. 

The  two  were  in  some  sort  complementary. 
179 


Crackanthorpe  with  shy  ingenuous  manners  and 
outbursts  of  enthusiasm  soon  followed  by  fits  of 
unaccountable,  black  depression,  and  Johnson 
very  grave  and  perfectly  poised,  a  sort  of  young 
old  man.  Yeats,  his  friend  and  contemporary, 
has  painted  him  to  the  life  in  a  phrase;  he 
speaks  of  "the  loneliness  and  gravity  of  his  mind ; 
its  air  of  high  lineage,"  this  last  clause  the  mag- 
ical word  only  possible  to  a  poet-spirit  when 
touched  with  love. 

The  Nineties  in  London 

The  Nineties  in  London!  Was  there  ever  a 
period  in  any  country  when  such  great  men  lived 
and  worked?  There  were  Tennyson  and 
Browning,  Arnold  and  Swinburne,  Meredith, 
Patmore  and  Aubrey  de  Vere  among  the  older 
poets;  and  in  science  and  thought,  Darwin, 
Lyell,  Kelvin,  Huxley,  Spencer  and  Wallace. 

And  the  wonderful  thing  was  that  for  the  most 
part  these  subtle  and  great  minds  were  familiar 
spirits  of  easy  approach  and  much  more  apt  to 
be  enthusiastic  about  young  talent  than  men  of 
small  accomplishment.  One  could  meet  and 
talk  to  any  of  them  almost  any  day;  indeed  a 
week  seldom  passed  for  years  in  which  I  did  not 
meet  one  or  more  of  them  in  friendly  intercourse. 

They  had  little  or  nothing  new  to  tell  one; 
they  had  given  their  best  in  their  books;  but  it 
was  intensely  interesting  to  lead  them  on  to 
answer  the  questionings  of  sense  and  outward 

180 


things  which   passages   in   their  writings   sug- 
gested. 

Did  Darwin  or  Spencer  or  Huxley  see  that 
the  gorgeous  soapbubble  of  theory  that  they  had 
blown  was  only  a  toy  to  amuse  the  mind  and 
did  not  lead  one  into  the  secret  purpose  of  things 
at  all  or  strip  a  single  veil  from  the  mysterious 
Goddess  of  Life? 

Why  had  Browning  said  so  little  about  his 
great  contemporaries?  Swinburne  and  Arnold, 
Patmore  and  Meredith  talked  freely  of  one  an- 
other, were  never  tired  indeed  of  drawing  lines 
of  relationship  from  themselves  to  other  Im- 
mortals, but  Browning  was  curiously  reticent. 

These  questions  and  a  thousand  like  them  I 
put  and  had  answered,  and  they  led  to  deeper 
confessions  and  more  intimate  questionings. 

Was  Swinburne's  erotic  poetry  a  mirror  of 
his  life? 

What  was  the  mystery  about  Meredith?  Was 
he  the  illegitimate  son  of  some  great  personage 
or  was  the  tailor  his  father? 

How  did  Patmore  come  to  be  a  Catholic 
mystic  who  spoke  of  Saint  Augustine  and  Santa 
Theresa  as  if  they  had  been  his  brother  and 
sister? 

Who  was  it  Browning  wanted  to  possess  in  that 
Last  Ride  Together 
when  the  desire  makes  the  page  glow  and  gives 
the  words  pulses. 

181 


And  the  younger  men  were  even  more  inter- 
esting; for  promise  is  more  exciting  than  per- 
formance. 

Housman  with  his  "Shropshire  Lad,"  and 
Dowson,  Symons  and  Home,  Francis  Thompson, 
John  Grey  and  Alfred  Douglas,  Mrs.  Meynell, 
too,  and  Mary  Robinson  and  Michael  Field — 
singers  enough,  and  a  crowd  of  novelists,  play- 
rights  and  painters  still  more  distinguished: 
Whistler,  Pater  and  Wilde,  Kipling,  Shaw, 
Beardsley,  Pryde  and  Wells;  Augustus  John, 
Sime  and  Max,  to  say  nothing  of  the  band  of 
gifted  Irishmen,  Yeats,  Moore,  Synge,  and 
"A.  E." 

And  these  men  were  all  eager  and  enthusiastic; 
good  work  done  and  better  projected.  One  could 
warm  oneself  with  their  hope.  Almost  any  after- 
noon I  could  hear  Kipling  read  a  new  poem, 
some  "Gunga  Din"  that  heated  the  blood  like 
rich  Burgundy  and  when  he  had  gone,  leaving 
the  air  still  throbbing  with  the  martial  words 
and  the  lilting  music,  in  would  come  Beardsley 
with  a  cover  of  "The  Yellow  Book"  which  Lane 
had  accepted  and  praised  and  then  at  the  last 
moment  when  his  eyes  had  been  opened,  had 
suppressed  in  horror  and  resentment  at  nudities 
"no  one  could  stand;  perfectly  disgraceful  1" 

Looking  a  mere  boy  Beardsley  would  point 
to  this  scabrous  detail  and  to  that:  "I  see  noth- 
ing wrong  with  the  drawing;  do  you?"  as  if 

182 


pudenda  were  ears  to  be  studied  in  every  whorl 
or  breasts  rounded  merely  to  show  how  perfect- 
ion of  line  makes  shading  superfluous. 

And  scarcely  had  we  finished  laughing  when 
Wilde  would  come  in  or  Jimmy  Pryde,  the  one 
resolved  to  take  us  to  dinner  with  Pater  or 
Whistler  and  the  other  proposing  a  meeting  of 
artists  at  the  Arts  Club. 

And  the  men  and  women  one  met  at  that  club 
in  Chelsea!  Will  Rothenstein  with  his  vivid 
eager  face  and  keen  intelligence;  Herbert 
Trench  with  a  new  poem  of  wrought  perfect- 
ness;  Arthur  Machen  with  his  head  of  prophet- 
priest  and  a  new  story  of  the  Oxford  Actors — 
and  the  talk  vivid,  enthusiastic,  pointed  with 
wit  or  barbed  with  sarcastic  epigram.  One 
telling  how  his  new  book  had  been  suppressed 
by  some  magistrate  or  "Bayswatered"  by  the  pub- 
lisher burst  out — "I  told  him  what  I  thought  of 
him,  though,  the  fool.  In  a  moment  I  was  boil- 
ing." 

"Don't  say  that,"  broke  in  a  quiet  voice.  "To 
come  to  boiling  point  so  quickly,  argues  a 
vacuum  in  the  upper  regions." 

Ah,  the  delighted  laughter  and  the  wild  out- 
bursts of  joy;  the  exuberance  of  youth,  shot 
through  with  the  wisdom  and  irony  of  mature 
understanding. 

Hubert  Crackanthorpe 

And  in  this  rich,  passionate,  pulsing  life  these 
183 


two  appeared  and  made  for  themselves  a  place ; 
Crackanthorpe  in  spite  of  his  shy  timidity  and 
Johnson  in  spite  of  his  boyish  face  and  preter- 
natural gravity.  They  were  both  small.  Crack- 
anthorpe, just  below  medium  height,  slight  and 
white  faced,  with  eyes  like  pale  Parma  violets 
and  hesitating  light  voice  growing  confident  and 
firm,  however,  in  praise.  Johnson,  smaller  still, 
though  not  so  frail,  with  large  head  and  assured 
quiet  manner  to  match  the  arrogant,  steady, 
thoughtful  eyes. 

Crackanthorpe  came  with  a  letter  of  intro- 
duction and  wished  me  to  read  a  short  story,  "A 
Conflict  of  Egotisms."  As  soon  as  I  took  it  up, 
it  interested  me ;  a  sort  of  impersonal  detachment 
in  it  curiously  revealing  personality,  especially 
the  description  of  the  writer  who  "had  learnt 
nothing  from  modern  methods,  either  French  or 
English;  he  belonged  to  no  clique,  he  had  no 
followers,  he  stood  quite  alone.  He  had  few 
friends  or  acquaintances,  not  from  misanthropy, 
sound  or  morbid,  but  the  accumulated  result  of 
years  of  voluntary  isolation." 

This  "sound  or  morbid"  showed  a  mind  that 
had  hatched  out  some  eggs  for  itself  and  a  little 
later  a  description  fascinated  me: 

"The  shower  had  been  a  fierce  one,  covering 
the  roadway  with  a  thick  crop  of  rain  spikes, 
filling  the  gutters  with  rushing  rivulets  of  muddy 
water;  now,  through  a  rift  in  the  ink-colored 

184 


clouds,  the  sunlight  was  filtering  feebly,  and  the 
swirl  of  the  downpour  had  subsided  to  a  gentle 
patter." 

The  "rain  spikes"  and  sunlight  "filtering 
feebly"  struck  me  as  the  painting  words  of  a 
real  writer  and  I  praised  him  accordingly.  I 
found  him  essentially  modest  though  he  knew 
his  own  value. 

"Do  you  think  I'll  ever  do  anything  worth 
while?" 

"You  have  already.  No  one  can  say  how  far 
you'll  go;  even  now  your  work  is  a  master's." 

"How  kind  of  you!  But  don't  spare  blame, 
please!    I  want  the  truth." 

"Well,  I  miss  the  joy  of  living,  the  youthful 
spring  and  all-conquering  desire.  Your  work  is 
sad,  detached  from  life,  curiously  aloof,  almost 
indifferent." 

"One  can  only  give  what  one  has." 

"Fall  in  love,"  I  cried  joyously,  "over  head 
and  ears;  that's  the  cure  for  you." 

"Who  knows,"  he  answered  wistfully.  "Some- 
times love  frightens  me.  One  might  fail  to  win 
the  pearl  of  great  price  or  the  shrine  might  be 
defiled." 

"Nothing  to  hinder  you  trying  again,"  I  re- 
plied. 

His  eyebrows  went  up  and  we  talked  of  other 
things;  of  books  and  men.  On  all  sides  his 
judgment  was  curiously  mature,  too  mature  for 

185 


his  years.     I  felt  the  cold  air  of  vague  appre- 
hension. 

His  first  book,  "Wreckage,"  made  a  stir,  set 
the  town  talking;  the  "nineties"  all  eager  to  wel- 
come talent. 

One  day  I  met  him  and  praised  one  story  in 
the  book  heartily:  "  *A  Dead  Woman'  is  great 
stuff,"  I  cried,  "go  on :  you'll  go  far." 

"I've  taken  your  prescription,  too,"  he  replied 
shyly,  blushing  like  a  girl. 

"I'm  glad,"  I  cried,  "love's  the  torch  1" 

A  few  months  later  I  heard  he  was  missing, 
no  one  seemed  to  know  why  or  wherefore ;  time 
passed  and  the  news  came  that  his  body  had  been 
found  in  the  Seine  at  Paris.  Life's  waves  had 
broken  too  heavily  on  him,  or  had  the  life-belt 
failed?    I  never  knew. 

For  years  his  loss  came  back  to  me  with  a 
sting:  "Why?  Why?  What  a  pity!"  I  could  not 
help  crying  out  whenever  the  thought  of  him 
came  up.  Against  my  will  I  kept  on  recalling 
our  conversations  and  communing  with  his  spirit 
till  at  length  I  seemed  to  find  coherence  and  a 
meaning  even  in  his  self-destruction.  A  nymph- 
olept  of  Beauty,  I  said  to  myself,  called  to  a  per- 
petual seeking,  when  at  length  he  found  his 
Dream  incarnate  in  the  flesh  he  spent  himself  in 
impious  adoration.  There  are  souls  so  glad  to 
give  that  life  itself  seems  too  poor  an  offering. 

186 


Was  the  mystery  of  poor  Crackanthorpe's  end 

explained  in  Francis  Thompson's  lines? 

Beauty,  to  adore  and  dream  on — 

To  be 

Perpetually 

Hers,  but  she  never  his. 

Better  the  Seine  water  than  such  Tantalus- 
torture! 

Lionel  Johnson 

Lionel  Johnson  was  of  stouter  stuff.  The  best 
years  of  his  life  were  spent  in  London  and  just 
cover  the  decade  1891-1901.  He  was  an  amal- 
gam of  English  and  Welsh  with  a  strong  strain 
of  Irish  blood  that  he  came  to  prize  highly.  He 
had  left  Oxford  with  a  great  reputation  for 
scholarship  and  talent  and  he  set  to  work  at  once 
in  London  writing  for  the  more  serious  weeklies. 
His  "Post  Liminium  or  Essays"  represent  one- 
quarter  of  these  contributions. 

All  his  prose  work  is  on  the  same  high  level 
distinguished  by  a  balanced  gravity  of  judgment 
illumined  whenever  necessary  by  apt  quotation; 
first-rate  journalism  passing  every  now  and  then 
into  literature  when  winged  by  some  passionate 
emotion.  Here  is  a  note  on  Francis  Thompson, 
hard  to  better  for  sympathy  and  sureness  of  ap- 
preciation : 

"Magnificently  faulty  at  times,  magnificently 
perfect  at  others.  The  ardors  of  poetry,  taking 
you  triumphantly  by  storm;  a  surging  sea  of 

187 


verse,  rising  and  falling  and  irresistibly  advanc- 
ing. Drunk  with  his  inspiration,  sometimes 
helplessly  so;  more  often  he  is  merely  fired  and 
quickened,  and  remains  master  of  himself.  Has 
done  more  to  harm  the  English  language  than 
the  worst  American  newspapers;  corruptio  op- 
timi  pessima.  Has  the  opulent,  prodigal  manner 
of  the  seventeenth  century;  a  profusion  of  great 
imagery,  sometimes  excessive  and  false;  an- 
other opulence  and  profusion,  that  of  Shelley  in 
his  lyric  choruses.  Beneath  the  outward  manner, 
a  passionate  reality  of  thought;  profound,  pa- 
thetic, full  of  faith  without  fear.  "Words  that, 
if  you  pricked  them,  would  bleed,"  as  was  said 
of  Meredith.  Incapable  of  prettiness  and  petti- 
ness; for  good  and  bad,  always  vehement  and 
burning  and — to  use  a  despised  word — sublime. 
Sublime,  rather  than  noble!  too  fevered  to  be 
austere;  a  note  of  ardent  suffering,  not  of  en- 
durance." 

Johnson's  volume  on  "The  Art  of  Hardy," 
shows  him  even  better;  but  I  was  always  sorry 
that  he  had  not  decided  to  write  on  his  old  tutor 
and  friend,  Walter  Pater,  whom  he  loved  and 
admired  intensely.  A  book  on  Pater  by  John- 
son would  have  been  of  extraordinary  value,  for 
Johnson  always  seemed  to  me  curiously  akin  to 
Pater,  both  in  nature  and  in  talent.  He  has 
written  half  a  dozen  different  papers  on  him, 
but  I  wish  he  had  given  a  volume  to  him  instead 

188 


of  to  Hardy,  for  not  only  was  he  like  Pater,  but 
in  some  ways  superior.  With  the  exception  of 
the  single  page  on  the  Mona  Lisa  I  take  more 
pleasure  in  reading  Johnson's  prose  than  Pater's 
and  when  it  comes  to  lyric  flights  I  prefer  them 
in  verse.  Now  Johnson  was  a  skilled  craftsman 
in  poetry;  you  find  verse  after  verse  with  some 
new  cadence  or  curious  felicity  of  expression. 

Everyone  knows  his  valedictory  on  Parnell 
which  gives  the  soul  of  Ireland: 

"I  cannot  praise  our  dead, 
Whom  Ireland  weeps  so  well: 
Her  morning  light,  that  fled ; 
Her  morning  star,  that  fell. 

Home  to  her  heart  she  drew 
The  mourning  company: 
Old  sorrows  met  the  new, 
In  sad  fraternity. 

•  •«•••• 

A  mother,  and  forget? 
Nay!  all  her  children's  fate 
Ireland  remembers  yet, 
With  love  insatiate." 

Yet  as  if  prophetic  of  the  future  he  sings  Eng- 
land too  and  above  all  Oxford,  and  above  even 
Oxford,  Pater: 

"Half  of  a  passionately  pensive  soul 

He  showed  us,  not  the  whole: 
Who  loved  him  best,  they  best,  they  only  knew, 

The  deeps  they  might  not  view: 
That  which  was  private  between  God  and  him: 

To  others  justly  dim."     . 

189 


I  do  not  hold  Johnson  up  as  a  great  poet;  he 
was  too  thought-burdened  ever  to  sing  freely; 
but  he  had  the  gift;  and  could  sing  in  Latin  as 
in  English  with  a  haunting  melody. 

I  always  hoped  he  would  write  some  great 
lyric  page  on  friendship  for  he  was  singularly 
gifted  with  sympathy,  a  soul  like  some  Aeolian 
harp  tuned  to  respond  to  every  breath  of  affec- 
tion and  with  this  rare  sensitiveness,  an  equable 
kind  temper,  a  mind  of  high  lineage. 

Like  Crackanthorpe,  Johnson  came  to  an  un- 
timely end.  He  had  rooms  in  Clifford's  Inn  and 
was  ailing  all  through  the  winter  of  1901-2. 
In  the  summer  he  gradually  got  better,  was  him- 
self again  when  he  met  with  an  accident  and  died 
within  a  week. 

I  am  not  sure  that  his  name  will  live;  I  much 
fear  that  his  work  will  hardly  find  a  place  in 
English  literature.  I  know  that  Thomson  wrote 
incomparably  greater  poetry  and  as  good  prose, 
too,  and  yet  is  hardly  known  save  to  lovers  of 
letters ;  yet  I  always  have  had  a  soft  spot  in  me 
of  liking  for  Lionel  Johnson,  for  his  steadfast 
eyes  and  air  of  resolute  self-possession.  And 
often  his  words  reach  the  heart  and  are  unfor- 
gettable, an  echo  of  the  sad  music  of  man's  mor- 
tality. Take  the  last  lines  in  his  song  to  the  Dark 
Angel : 

Lonely  unto  the  lone  I  go 
Divine,  to  the  Divinity. 

190 


No  wonder  he  put  the  couplet  into  italics; 
there  is  in  it  all  his  heart's  yearning  for  affection 
together  with  the  proud  self-consciousness  of  the 
great  artist 

I  cannot  mourn  for  these  men  as  cut  off  un- 
timely leaving  their  best  unsaid,  the  sweetest 
songs  unsung.  I  have  a  sort  of  superstition  that 
no  one  dies  till  the  soul  in  him  has  finished 
growing,  till  his  best  work  is  all  done.  Had 
Crackanthorpe  more  to  give,  or  Johnson,  or 
Keats?  I  doubt  it.  We  have  got  their  best; 
Shakespeare  was  given  time  even  to  finish  "The 
Tempest";  Cervantes  did  not  put  his  "foot  in 
the  stirrup"  till  the  second  part  of  "Don 
Quixote"  was  in  men's  hands.  Yet  the  pathos  of 
untimely  loss  is  there  and  the  passionate  regret : 
Lonely  unto  the  lone  I  go 
Divine,  to  the  Divinity. 


191 


PIERRE  LOTI :  A  LORD  OF  LANGUAGE 

T  was  in  Paris  in  1887,  I  believe,  at  a 
costume  ball  given  by  Madame 
Adam,  then  editor  of  La  Nouvelle 
Revuej  that  I  first  heard  of  Loti. 
He  had  come  dressed  as  a  Pharaoh 
and  his  costume  of  Rameses  II.  was  a  marvel,  it 
was  said,  of  artistic  weirdness  and  antiquarian 
correctitude.  He  was  pointed  out  to  me  seated  in 
a  room  talking  to  a  lady;  his  youth  excused  his 
pretentiously  quaint  costume,  and  I  was  natural- 
ly curious  to  learn  all  I  could  about  him.  Who 
was  he?  What  had  he  done  to  become  a  per- 
sonage in  a  day? 

"He's  a  young  sailor,"  I  was  told,  "a  lieuten- 
ant in  the  Navy,  who  in  his  very  first  book 
brought  a  new  atmosphere  into  French  fiction, 
and  even  taught  French  prose  a  new  music  or 
at  least  new  cadences  and  dowered  it  with  a  sort 
of  Biblical  or  Breton  sadness  and  resignation: 
II  faut  lire  ca;  ah,  oui;  you  must  read  him  I 

His  real  name,  it  appeared,  was  Julien  Viaud; 
he  was  born  at  Rochefort-on-Sca,  of  Protestant 
stock,  brought  up,  therefore,  on  the  Bible;  had 
traveled  widely.  Queen  Pomare  of  Tahiti  had 
given  him  the  name  of  Loti,  after  ^p  oceanic 
flower, 

192 


Pierre  Loti 


Oddly  enough,  that  first  dawn  of  fame  in 
Paris  was  all  admiration  and  romance,  colored 
by  a  rich  glow  of  exoticism  that  appeared  to 
silence  judgment  and  suspend  even  sane  appre- 
ciation. Paris  was  like  a  child  with  a  new  toy, 
and  wouldn't  even  believe  that  it  could  ever  find 
fault  or  flaw  in  its  plaything. 

In  the  next  week  or  so  I  read  "Le  Mariage  de 
Loti."  Was  it  Viaud's  first  book  or  merely  the 
first  that  happened  to  fall  into  my  hands?  I 
could  not  say.  It  does  not  matter  much,  for  in 
any  case  that  delicate  and  passionate  idyll  of 
love  on  an  island  of  the  southern  Pacific  was  not 
a  bad  way  of  meeting  Loti.  The  Tahitian  girl, 
Rarahu,  is  as  attractive  and  exciting  as  a  model 
of  Gauguin.  Her  love-letters  have  something  of 
the  savage  about  them — a  mixture  of  childish- 
ness and  passion — a  new  and  heady  intoxicant. 
From  that  moment  I  was  one  of  Loti's  admirers; 
but  by  the  following  season  Paris  had  changed. 
Suddenly,  as  in  an  hour,  the  gay  child  had 
grown  tired  of  her  new  doll,  had  learned  its 
tricks,  so  to  speak,  and  was  eager  to  show  that 
its  mechanism  had  not  fooled  her  for  a  moment; 
she  had  always  known  that  its  roundnesses  were 
only  sawdust — "Loti — un  espece  de  Chateau- 
briand (a  sort  of  Chateaubriand) — un  rhetori- 
cien,  un  romantique — quoi!"  with  a  shrug  of 
disdainful  denigration.  And  when  I  objected  to 
this  summary  classification  and  suggested  that 

193 


he  might  yet  write  a  great  sea-epic,  a  wonderful 
song  of  life  and  love,  I  was  met  by  doubt,  dis- 
belief, masking  a  profound  indifference.  One 
cried  at  me: 

"Don't  you  know  the  story  of  Loti? 

"One  day  the  Duchess  of asked  him  to  a 

reception  and  he  turned  up  with  a  big  sailor: 
mon  frere  Ives,  if  you  please.  That  finished  him 
off;  that  was  too  much  for  even  feminine  admira- 
tion," and  they  all  laughed. 

Paris  accepts  a  talent  promptly,  eagerly,  par- 
ticularly if  it  is  strange  and  bizarre,  but  Paris 
drops  it  just  as  quickly.  It  is  only  the  Hugos 
and  Balzacs  who  can  hold  that  fickle  charming 
mistress,  and  they  hold  her  by  strength  and 
courage  and  ever-renewed  conquest. 

I  read  all  Loti's  books  as  they  came  out,  "Mon 
Frere  Ives,"  "Pecheur  d'Islande,"  and  the  rest, 
and  my  admiration  grew  deeper,  broader-based. 
Loti,  I  used  to  say  to  myself,  was  the  true  laure- 
ate of  the  ocean,  the  singer  of  the  sea,  without  a 
rival  in  any  language.  Yet  up  to  that  time  I 
had  thought  the  shipwreck  in  "Don  Juan"  hard 
to  beat 

The  sea  has  inspired  a  great  many  poets  and 
has  been  the  theme  of  much  excellent  writing. 
Keats's  linca : — 

"The  moving  waters  at  their  priest-like  task 
Of  pure  ablution  round  Earth's  human  shores," 
are   of   course   incomparable,   seem   indeed   to 

194 


touch  the  zenith  of  accomplishment,  though  one 
has  to  admit  that  he  borrowed  the  sentiment 
from  Euripides.  By  the  way,  Matthew  Arnold 
once  quoted  this  couplet  and  characteristically, 
as  I  think,  changed  "pure"  into  "cold."  Never- 
theless, his  own  great  line,  "the  unplumb'd,  salt, 
estranging  sea,"  shows  that  he  too  was  haunted 
by  the  loneliness  and  mystery  of  the  great  deep, 
though  he  does  not  love  it  with  the  awe  and 
passion  of  Loti,  whose  very  soul  seems  to  have 
been  colored  by  it  and  tuned  to  it 

There  is  a  description  of  a  storm  in  "Mon 
Frere  Ives,"  I  think,  or  it  may  be  in  even  an 
earlier  book,  which  has  in  it  all  the  magic  of 
the  sea,  from  the  organ  music  of  its  deep  to  the 
swirl  and  snarl  of  its  surface,  from  the  scream 
of  the  wind  to  its  thunder,  and  Loti  has  un- 
leashed about  one  the  elemental  forces  of  Nature 
— unconscious  and  irresistible — forces  that  make 
one  shiver  with  the  sense  of  man's  frailty  and 
man's  mortality.  Loti's  soul  has  been  formed  by 
the  sea,  and  no  one  has  ever  painted  a  mistress 
in  all  her  moods  with  more  consummate  artistry. 

Conrad,  too,  has  depicted  a  storm  with  an  as- 
tounding cunning  that  reminds  me  of  Loti.  I 
forget  the  name  of  the  book,  but  Conrad  realizes 
the  sailormen  at  the  same  time,  whereas  in  Loti 
I  get  nothing  but  the  sea  and  the  tempest  and 
Death  triumphant  riding  on  the  wings  of  the 
wind. 

195 


Naturally  I  was  eager  to  meet  him,  this  singer 
of  the  great  Deep,  and  I  did  meet  him  some 
years  later  in  the  palace  at  Monaco  by  a  window 
that  looked  out  over  the  garden  to  the  sun-kissed 
wavelets  of  the  Mediterranean. 

There  is  a  great  text  in  Corinthians: 

"It  is  sown  a  natural  body,  it  is  raised  a  spirit- 
ual body  .  .  .  for  this  corruptible  must  put  on 
incorruption  and  this  mortal  .  .  .  immor- 
tality." 

But  suppose  it's  the  other  way  about  and  the 
immortal  puts  on  mortality  and  the  spirit  a 
natural  body  before  your  eyes?  I  had  already 
had  many  disillusions  of  the  sort,  many  proofs 
that  what  Shakespeare  calls  "this  muddy  vesture 
of  decay,"  this  outward  bodily  presentment  of 
us  men,  has  no  relation  to  the  soul;  but  never 
was  the  disillusion  more  astonishing. 

Loti  was  in  the  trim  uniform  of  a  French 
naval  lieutenant  that  accentuated  his  tiny  figure. 
He  is  about  five  feet  four  in  height,  slight  and 
straight.  And  surely  he  wears  corsets;  it  is 
hardly  possible  that  a  man  should  have  so  slim 
and  round  a  waist!  And  surely  his  cheeks  are 
rouged;  the  rose  flush  is  too  artistically  perfect 
to  be  natural.  We  are  introduced:  his  voice  is 
a  thin  treble:  "Heureux,  monsieur,  de  faire 
voire  connaissance  .  .  .  la  Princesse  m'a  beau- 
coup  parle  de  vous"  (Happy  to  make  your  ac- 
quaintance ;  the  Princess  has  often  spoken  to  me 

196 


of  you).    His  hand  is  the  hand  of  a  child. 

''Mon  Frere  Ives,"  "My  Brother  Ives,"  the 
big  strong  sailorman,  the  hero  of  the  romance, 
flashes  into  my  mind  with  another  meaning:  the 
inference  irresistible!  Surely  the  comedy  of  life 
is  inexhaustible  and  staged  by  a  master  of  the 
unexpected. 

Loti's  face  is  wistful  in  expression ;  something 
querulous  veils  the  melancholy  of  the  eyes;  the 
lips  are  rather  thick,  the  nose  a  little  fleshy;  one 
returns  to  the  eyes;  they  meet  you  with  a  shade 
of  distrust  and  apprehension,  like  those  of  a  dog 
that  has  often  been  punished;  underneath  they 
are  sad,  sad.   .    .    . 

The  Princess  Alice  was  one  of  Loti's  earliest 
and  most  enthusiastic  admirers;  she  told  me  that 
his  name  was  taken  from  a  rare  tropical  flower 
that  floats  on  water,  "le  loti." 

"He  is  *a  sensitive,'  "  she  insisted,  "who  carries 
about  with  him  an  eternal  regret.  He  would 
have  liked,  above  everything,  to  be  big  and 
strong  ...  a  sailor-lover — and  he's  tiny:  he 
resents  it.  One  should  be  considerate  of  him 
and  not  in  words  only,  but  in  looks  and  manner; 
he's  very  affectionate  underneath.   ..." 

I  was  so  interested  that  I  did  not  need  the 
warning;  I  was  full  of  sympathy  for  the  great 
craftsman,  eager  to  know  where  he  had  learned 
the  varied  music  of  his  rhythms,  the  inevitable 
painting  words  of  his  prose;  above  all,  what  had 

197 


helped  him  to  his  immediate  bare  vision  of 
things  ? 

Gradually,  under  my  warm  admiration,  he 
thawed  out.  I  had  asked  him  did  he  know 
Bourget  (another  friend  of  the  Princess)  or 
Renan? 

"No,"  he  answered,  "no,  I  never  read,  you 
know,"  and  then  the  astounding  confession — "I 
have  never  read  anything  ...  no,  not  even 
Chateaubriand  .  .  .  though  he  has  been  called 
my  master,"  and  he  smiled  deprecatingly. 

"Really?"  I  exclaimed:  "but  of  course  you've 
read  Montaigne,  Moliere,  Racine,  La  Fontaine, 
the  classics?" 

"Not  one  of  them,"  he  replied :  "a  good  deal 
of  the  Bible  as  a  boy  and  since  I  grew  up  a  few 
of  my  friends'  books;  for  example,  'Chante- 
pleure,'  which  I  think  excellent.   ..." 

"But  in  the  long  days  and  nights  at  sea  be- 
tween watches:  don't  you  read?" 

"No,"  he  replied,  "no,  I  muse.  I  recall  past 
experiences  to  memory;  but  that's  all." 

"Where  did  you  get  your  style  from?"  I  ex- 
claimed. 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders:  "I  don't  know; 
do  you  think  reading  helps  you  much?" 

"No,  I  don't,"  I  was  fain  to  admit. 

Loti's  experience  in  this  matter  amplified  and 
supported  my  own  and  strengthened  a  belief  of 
mine  which  is  novel  and  altogether  out  of  tunc 

198 


with  the  spirit  of  our  time.  I  used  to  say  that 
whatever  originality  I  possessed  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  when  I  was  a  lad  I  passed  the  two 
formative  years  from  sixteen  as  a  cowboy,  with- 
out books,  and  consequently  was  forced  to  answer 
all  the  questionings  of  sense  and  outward  things 
for  myself  and  furnish  myself  with  a  new  creed, 
and  so  learned  to  think — a  part  of  education  al- 
most wholly  neglected  today.  I  profited  so 
much  by  this  discipline  that  later  when  a  book 
like  Carlyle's  "Heroes  and  Hero  Worship"  fell 
into  my  hands  I  would  not  read  it;  I  preferred 
to  think  over  the  subject  for  myself  and  then 
read  the  book  just  to  see  how  much  Carlyle  could 
enlarge  or  modify  the  conclusions  to  which  I 
had  come.  il!4i^'^ 

To  reading  one  owes  little!  it  adds  nothing  to 
mental  power ;  it  only  swells  the  wallet  of  mem- 
ory one  has  to  carry.  But  thinking  enlarges  the 
mind  and  invigorates  it,  just  as  exercise  invigo- 
rates the  body. 

And  now  in  Loti  I  had  found  a  man  who 
owed  his  direct  and  personal  vision  of  things  to 
the  fact  that  he  had  never  read,  had  used  his 
own  eyes  and  not  the  eyes  of  other  men.  He 
was  a  master  of  the  most  musical  French  prose 
without  knowing  anything  of  the  great  rheto- 
ricians who  had  preceded  him;  without  having 
learned  a  cadence  from  Bossuet  or  an  epithet 
from  Chateaubriand  or  Gautier. 

199 


I  thus  came  to  believe  that  cheap  books  and 
papers  are  a  hindrance  to  originality  and  not  a 
help;  in  the  future  men  will  read  less  and  think 
more.  What  a  good  thing  it  would  be  if  here 
in  America  men  would  prohibit  newspapers  in- 
stead of  wine.  Wine  helps  digestion  and  adds 
to  the  harmless  pleasures  of  life,  while  news- 
papers are  seldom  worth  reading,  and  the  habit 
of  glancing  at  them  every  hour  or  two,  without 
thinking,  is  more  injurious  to  the  mind  that  even 
dram  drinking  is  to  the  body. 

Take  up  Bacon^s  "Essays"  or  Schopenhaur's 
and  you  will  see  at  once  that  both  these  men 
have  thought  and  come  to  their  own  conclusions 
without  help  from  others,  and  how  much 
"meatier"  and  more  nourishing  they  are  than  the 
literary  apes  who  brag  of  being  "sedulous"  in 
parrotting. 

I  am  not  sure  that  Loti  wears  well ;  he  is  too 
sad.  "Pecheur  d'Islande"  is  perhaps  his  best  and 
most  characteristic  book;  yet  he  only  gives  Gaud, 
the  charming  heroine,  a  week  of  married  hap- 
piness when  Yann,  her  stalwart  husband,  sails 
away  on  that  voyage  to  the  Iceland  fishing  from 
which  he  never  returned.  It  is  too  little  joy  for 
a  whole  life-time  of  sorrow. 

I  pick  up  another  book  of  Loti's  at  haphazard 
and  find  that  toward  the  end  he  has  told  how  a 
common  sailor  has  climbed  as  high  as  he  can 
get  in  the  French  Navv,  has  become  senior  war- 

200 


rant  oiftcer,  and  at  length  has  reached  the  age  of 
compulsory  retirement.  He  has  dreamt  of  free- 
dom for  thirty-odd  years,  has  pictured  to  himself 
the  comfort  and  ease  of  unconstrained  idleness; 
he  will  have  a  house  of  his  own;  a  bed,  a  real 
bed  to  sleep  in,  and  a  little  garden;  fresh  vege- 
tables— a  lazy  quiet  time  for  years  before  the 
inevitable  end. 

"Jean  Kervella  comes  to  the  cottage  he  has 
bought  on  the  road  between  Brest  and  Portzic; 
it  has  a  noble  view  of  the  harbor  and  ocean  and 
quite  a  large  garden;  a  wonder-plot.  He  hangs 
up  his  silver  whistle  over  the  chimney  and  sits 
down  to  enjoy  himself  by  his  own  fireside  in 
peace.  It's  going  to  be  a  wild  night;  he  can  hear 
the  swing  of  the  waves  on  the  whinstone  crags 
and  that  moan  in  the  wind  is  not  to  be  mistaken; 
the  clouds,  too,  are  full  of  menace;  but  what 
need  he  care?  it  can  blow  to  split  tarpaulins 
while  he  lies  snug. 

"His  thoughts  went  back  to  his  earlier  life 
and  his  little  girl  who  died  while  he  was  in  Ton- 
quin,  and  in  the  quiet  and  silence  slow  tears 
gathered  in  his  eyes,  as  stone  sweats  moisture, 
and  sadness  came  upon  him  and  the  tears  pour 
down  his  face  like  rain  and  drip  over  his  thick 
gray  beard.  It  is  not  regret  but  just  profound 
sadness,  an  intimate  distress,  and  he  breaks  down 
at  length  in  wild  sobbing,  with  only  one  desire 

201 


at  the  heart  of  him,  to  be  done  with  it  all  and 
be  at  rest  in  the  grave." 

I  know  no  sadder  page ;  it  cannot  be  read  with- 
out tears  the  first  time  and  it  is  too  sad  to  read 
again.  But  the  books  we  love,  the  books  that 
will  live,  are  those  we  read  again  and  again  and 
draw  fresh  encouragement  from  revived  hope 
and  courage  wound  up. 

After  all,  we  say  Loti  is  too  much  of  a  pessi- 
mist, too  disenchanted,  a  little  morbid,  even.  He 
has  never  married  and  his  life  is  lonely.  Life 
is  harsh  enough  to  the  sensitive  ones  and  cold  to 
passionate  lovers;  but  in  spite  of  everything  life 
is  not  so  cruel  as  Loti  paints  it,  and  perhaps  it's 
a  great  writer's  privilege  to  depict  it  as  just  a 
little  better  and  happier  than  it  is  on  the  prin- 
ciple laid  down  by  Goethe  when  he  said:  "Give 
me  your  beliefs  and  affirmations;  they  encourage 
and  stimulate  me ;  but  keep  your  doubts  and  fears 
to  yourself;  I  have  enough  of  my  own."  An 
English  writer  says: 

''Life  is  mostly  froth  and  trouble, 
Two  things  stand  like  stone; 
Kindness  in  another's  trouble, 
Courage  in  your  own." 

And  so  I  say  the  brave  guides  will  make  little 
of  the  rough  places  and  untoward  accidents  of 
this  earthly  pilgrimage  and  will  dwell  on  the 
joyous  happenings,  the  dramatic  chances  and 
romantic  meetings  of  the  great  adventure. 

202 


Walter  Pater 


WALTER  PATER. 

EARS  before  I  met  Pater  I  had 
heard  of  him.  After  going  round 
the  world  I  returned  to  England 
and  was  spending  the  summer  in 
Tenby,  a  lovely  place  on  the  shore 
of  South  Wales.  There  I  met  an  Oxford  grad- 
uate; I  forget  his  name  and  all  about  him  save 
that  he  preached  Pater,  Pater  unregenerate, 
Pater  the  Pagan.  He  showed  me  long  passages 
of  Pater's  essays  on  the  "Renaissance"  and  I 
went  down  before  him.  Later  I  read  Theophile 
Gautier  in  Paris  and  found  him  the  greater  man 
and  greater  writer  with  essentially  the  same 
mental  outlook.  But  for  the  moment  I  was  car- 
ried off  my  feet  by  Pater's  carven  prose  and 
enquired  about  him  sedulously.  My  friend  told 
me  that  he  knew  him  as  a  professor  and  lecturer 
on  Plato  and  more  than  hinted  that  Pater  was 
looked  upon  in  Oxford  with  suspicion  as  the 
apostle  of  an  esoteric  cult,  the  apologist  of 
strange  sins.  Not  knowing  then  how  common 
this  perversion  is  in  England,  I  was  a  little 
startled  and  tremendously  curious.  I  asked  him 
for  proofs,  for  some  evidence,  but  could  get  none. 
A  little  later  Mallock's  "New  Republic"  ap- 
peared and  apparentlv  made  a  similar  accusation 

203 


of  perverse  self-indulgence.  Mr.  Rose  was  evi- 
dently intended  to  be  a  sketch  of  Pater,  and 
Rose  confessed  to  a  liking  for  erotic  books  and 
talked  so  that  Lady  Ambrose  says:  "Mr.  Rose 
always  speaks  of  people  as  if  they  had  no  clothes 


on." 


What  foundation  there  may  have  been  for  the 
darker  suspicion,  I  did  not  and  do  not  know, 
am  inclined  indeed  to  believe  that  there  was 
nothing  but  Pater's  talk  that  could  be  offered  in 
evidence;  nothing  more  than  such  slander  as 
springs  up  against  superiority,  such  supposition 
as  may  be  drawn  from  inference. 

My  interest  in  Pater  thereby  quickened,  I 
read  all  he  had  written,  and  even  in  his  journal- 
ism found  nothing  offensive,  though  I  marked  a 
score  of  passages  that  might  give  pause  to  the 
puritan.  He  talks  once — I  forget  in  what  essay 
— of  a  Shakespearean  actor  with  a  face  of  "not 
quite  reassuring  subtlety,  who  might  pass  for  the 
original  of  those  Italian  or  Italianized  ('Italian- 
ate'  was  the  contemptuous  Elizabethan  adjec- 
tive) voluptuaries  in  sin  which  pleased  the  fancy 
of  Shakespeare's  age."  There  is  nothing  in  this 
if  you  like;  but  read  carefully  in  puritanic  Eng- 
land there  is  contempt  for  the  ordinary  prejudice 
in  that  ironical  "not  quite  reassuring  subtlety," 
and  a  gloating  approval  of  "voluptuaries  in  sin," 
which  goes  far  to  explain  how  the  suspicion  may 
have  arisen  as  to  Pater's  morals. 

20+ 


"But  who  are  you,"  I  said  to  myself,  "to  sit 
in  judgment  on  another  man  or  condemn  his 
appreciations?" 

Seven  or  eight  years  afterwards,  in  London, 
I  met  Pater  in  the  flesh,  met  him  again  and 
again  before  I  began  to  know  him.  He  had 
lunched  with  me,  dined  with  me  a  dozen  times 
before  he  asked  me  to  tea  with  his  sisters  and 
then  much  later  to  dinner.  He  was  the  last  man 
in  the  world  to  wear  his  heart  on  his  sleeve,  or 
give  his  confidence  lightly.  For  several  years  he 
held  back  from  me,  seemed  surprised  that  I 
should  pursue  him  with  friendly  invitations, 
should  desire  his  company.  And  indeed  for  a 
long  time  he  was  among  the  dullest  and  most 
irresponsive  of  guests. 

But  the  contrast  between  the  person  Pater  and 
his  writings  intrigued  me,  excited  curiosity;  the 
old  suspicion  implanted  in  me  would  not  be  laid. 
There  was  something  enigmatical  in  his  aloof- 
ness, his  studied  reticence: — What  was  it? 

In  person  Pater  gave  one  the  impression  of 
being  big  and  heavy;  he  was  only  about  five  feet 
nine  or  ten  in  height,  stoutly  built  though  neither 
muscular  nor  fat;  but  he  moved  slowly,  delib- 
erately, and  so  conveyed  the  feeling  of  weight. 
When  he  took  off  his  hat  the  impression  was 
deepened;  his  face  is  perfectly  given  in  Will 
Rothenstein's  outline  sketch ;  a  great  domed  fore- 
head, massive  features,  closed  eyes  and  mouth 

205 


hidden  under  a  heavy  dark  moustache;  the  tell- 
tale features  all  concealed — blinds,  so  to  speak, 
before  the  windows  of  the  soul. 

When  Pater  looked  at  you,  you  were  surprised 
by  the  naked  glance  of  the  gray-green  eyes.  The 
eyes  revealed  nothing;  they  were  hard,  bare, 
scrutinizing.  He  had  surely  something  strange, 
unique,  to  say,  this  man.    Why  did  he  not  say  it? 

He  dressed  conventionally;  so  perfectly  in 
the  convention  that  he  must  have  sought  to  evade 
notice;  why?  He  talked  in  the  same  way  con- 
ventional courtesies,  warding  off  enquiry;  in- 
quisitiveness  he  met  with  monosyllables  or  mere- 
ly by  raising  of  eyebrows.  What  had  he  to  hide 
or  to  confess? 

I  still  recall  my  surprise  when  I  went  to 
Pater's  to  dinner  for  the  first  time.  It  was  an 
ordinary,  little,  middle-class  English  house;  no 
distinction  about  it  of  any  kind.  I  had  expected 
a  wonderful  house,  or  unique  decoration,  or  if 
not  that,  at  least  a  rare  sketch,  or  plaster  cast, 
a  sixteenth  century  book,  a  superb  binding — 
something  that  would  suggest  this  man's  lifelong 
devotion  to  art,  his  single-hearted  passionate 
adoration  of  all  the  sanctities  of  plastic  loveli- 
ness. Not  a  sign  of  this;  hardly  a  hint.  The 
house  might  have  belonged  to  a  grocer;  might 
have  been  furnished  by  one,  only  a  grocer  would 
not  have  been  content  with  its  total  absence  of 

206 


ornament,  its  austere  simplicity.  Clearly  Pater's 
inspiration  did  not  depend  on  surroundings. 

Pater's  sisters  were  two  colorless  spinsters  of 
a  certain  age.  They  talked  little — a  pair  of  mid- 
Victorian  ladies,  prudish,  reserved,  meticulously 
correct.  Was  it  their  influence,  or  what  was  it 
that  kept  the  talk  in  the  shallows?  I  asked  them 
about  life  in  Oxford ;  "did  they  prefer  it  to  the 
life  in  London?" 

"No,"  they  thought  they  liked  London  best. 
One  of  them  said  quietly  it  was  a  richer  life,  but 
the  other  hesitated :    "Oxford  is  so  beautiful." 

Thinking  it  all  over  afterwards,  analyzing  my 
disappointment,  the  sisters  and  the  house  seemed 
to  me  to  represent  the  decorous  dullness  which 
Pater  fled  in  order  to  indulge  his  dreams  of  a 
fuller  and  more  passionate  life  in  creative  art. 
Writing,  I  think,  of  Amiens  Cathedral,  he  speaks 
somewhere  of  "conceptions  embodied  in  cliffs  of 
carved  stone  all  the  more  welcome  as  a  comple- 
ment to  the  meagrcncss  of  most  people's  present 
existence."  He  was  under  the  influence  of  this 
"meagrcncss,  for  when  I  tried  to  ask  him  about 
his  work  he  answered  mc  reluctantly  in  mono- 
syllables. He  spoke  in  a  low  voice  that  seemed 
measured,  though  he  often  hesitated,  picking  his 
words,  intent  on  saying  just  what  he  wished  to 
say.  There  was  no  music  in  his  utterance,  no 
thrill;  it  was  lifeless,  impassive  like  his  face. 

"Had  you  your  essays  on  the  Renaissance  long 
in  hand?"  I  asked,  knowing  that  most  of  them 

207 


had  appeared  first  in  The  Fortnightly  Review, 
some  as  early  as  1868,  though  the  volume  was 
not  published  till  1873. 

His  brow  wrinkled  and  he  seemed  a  little  per- 
plexed. 

"I  suppose  so;  I  do  not  remember  very  well." 

"I  always  think,"  I  went  on,  "that  Sainte 
Beuve's  'Lundis'  are  so  good  because  he  had 
written  most  of  the  essays  again  and  again  for 
newspapers  before  finally  polishing  and  publish- 
ing them  in  book  form." 

Pater  still  wore  his  reluctant,  hesitating  air. 
"I  try  to  make  my  first  draft  as  complete  as  I 


can." 


I  thought  by  showing  more  intimate  interest 
that  I  might  arouse  him,  so  I  began : 

"Long  before  I  read  your  wonderful  essay,  I 
was  puzzled  by  the  smile  of  the  Mona  Lisa.  It 
was  more  perfect  still  in  Leonardo's  St.  John  in 
the  Louvre,  probably  because  the  painting  has 
not  been  so  tampered  with.  The  mouth  is  smil- 
ing, but  if  you  cover  it,  you  will  find  the  eyes  are 
serious,  searching,  questioning.  It  is  the  ques- 
tion in  the  eyes  in  contrast  with  the  smiling  lips, 
that  gives  the  enigmatic  expression.  Years  later 
I  found  Leonardo  himself  had  explained  the 
^mile  in  this  way,  so  my  guess  was  right.  It 
pleased  me  inordinately  at  the  time  to  have 
divined  the  'procede'  (I  did  not  wish  to  say 
'trick')." 

208 


Pater  contented  himself  with  nodding  his 
head,  so  I  dashed  on: 

"Of  course,  the  painting  is  a  poor  thing;  but 
your  page  on  it  is,  I  think,  the  best  page  in  all 
English  prose." 

His  brow  cleared,  and  half  smiling  he  mur- 
mured:   "Kind  of  you." 

"How  did  you  write  it?  Did  you  take  especial 
pains  with  it?  But  of  course  you  did.  Even 
Shakespeare  rewrote  his  principal  passages  a 
dozen  times." 

"I  take  special  pains,"  he  replied,  "with  every 
page — indeed  with  every  sentence." 

Later  I  found  out  what  he  meant  by  especial 
pains. 

When  he  had  something  new  to  express  he 
used  to  say  the  idea  over  and  over  again  to  him- 
self and  then  write  it  fairly  on  a  little  slip  of 
paper.  He  would  carry  with  him  for  a  walk 
perhaps  half  a  dozen  of  these  slips  loose  in  his 
pocket.  When  he  found  himself  in  a  different 
mood,  by  the  riverside  in  Oxford,  or  under  the 
trees  of  Kensington  Gardens,  he  would  take  out 
a  slip,  repeat  the  sentence  to  himself  again,  cor- 
rect the  English  now  here,  now  there,  and  finally 
perhaps  end  by  finding  a  new  form  altogether 
for  the  thought.  When  he  came  home  he  would 
write  this  new  sentence  down  and  carry  it  about 
with  him  for  days  till  he  was  certain  he  could 
not  improve  on  it.    Jeweller's  work,  or  rather 

209 


the  work  of  some  great  lapidary,  fashioning  the 
stone  to  the  idea  in  his  mind,  facet  by  facet  with 
a  loving  solicitude,  an  inexhaustible  patience. 

I  had  to  be  content  with  gleaning  such  facts 
as  this  about  him  till  I  met  him  for  the  first  time 
with  Oscar  Wilde.  Then  I  found  a  different 
man. 

I  had  invited  them  both  to  dinner  and  they 
were  evidently  delighted  to  meet.  For  some 
reason  or  other  Oscar  was  not  at  his  best;  not  so 
vivacious,  so  charming,  as  usual.  He  begged 
me  to  excuse  him,  hinting  that  I  knew  the  cause 
of  his  depression,  and  this  sign  of  intimacy  trans- 
formed Pater.  He  moved  freely,  spoke  freely, 
without  hesitation,  though  still  deliberately  and 
manifestly  with  entire  sincerity. 

The  change  was  marked  to  me  by  one  inci- 
dent. 

It  was  about  the  time  of  the  Dilke  scandal, 
and  Oscar  plainly  wishing  to  ingratiate  me  with 
Pater,  told  him  how  I  had  defended  the  famous 
Radical  even  in  The  Evening  News,  a  Conserv- 
ative daily  paper  which  I  was  editing  at  the 
time. 

"Frank  is  more  than  tolerant,"  Oscar  re- 
marked ;  "he  has  a  positive  liking  for  all  sinners, 
even  for  strange  sins — sins  he's  not  inclined  to." 

"How  did  you  come  by  such  tolerance?"  Pater 
asked. 

"Native  viciousncss,"  I  replied;  "the  cham- 
210 


bermaid's  testimony  that  often  three  pillows 
were  wanted  for  Dilke's  bed  amused  me,  and  I 
hate  even  the  word  'tolerance.'  What  human 
being  has  a  right  to  assume  that  superior  atti- 
tude to  any  other  man  or  any  fault?  I  have  no 
condemnations  in  me." 

Pater  nodded  approval,  smiling. 

The  ice  was  broken  once  for  all.  From  that 
moment  Pater  relaxed,  began  to  let  himself  go, 
was  willing  even  to  make  an  effect;  little  jewels 
of  expression,  "carved  ivories  of  speech,"  to  use 
his  own  fine  phrase,  made  their  appearance  in 
his  talk;  soul-revealing  words  like  the  praise  he 
has  given  to  Leonardo's  illegitimate  birth,  ascrib- 
ing to  it  some  "puissance"  of  nature;  in  fine  the 
real  Pater  showed  himself  ingenuously. 
When  he  left  he  begged  me  to  ask  him  again, 
the  usual  courtesies  warmed  now  by  sincere  feel- 
ing. 

I  could  not  help  telling  Oscar  how  delightful 
it  was  to  me  that  the  buttoned  up,  precise  Pater 
should  have  become  so  human,  so  interesting. 
"I  could  not  make  up  my  mind,"  I  said,  "whether 
he  was  merely  shy,  or  afraid  to  let  himself  go." 

"Not  shy,"  Oscar  rejoined,  "but  a  burnt  child ; 
he  used  to  speak  very  frankly  in  Oxford,  I  be- 
lieve, till  Mallock  caricatured  him." 

"He's  really  a  dear,"  he  went  on ;  "only  a  few 
of  us  know  how  kind  he  is,  how  really  warm- 
hearted.   Ever  since  Oxford  he  has  been  a  friend 

211 


of  mine;  a  great  friend"  he  repeated  with  em- 
phasis. 

Even  after  this  Pater,  when  in  ordinary  com- 
pany, would  use  his  old  discretion;  but  at  mo- 
ments the  sun  shone  and  I  felt  its  warmth  always 
behind  the  cloud-cloak.  Whenever  a  phrase 
pleased  him  the  mask  would  drop.  His  heavy 
face  would  break  into  a  smile,  the  green  eyes 
would  be  turned  on  you  with  their  enigmatic, 
lingering  regard. 

I  well  remember  a  dinner  one  summer  even- 
ing in  a  room  overlooking  Hyde  Park,  when 
Matthew  Arnold  and  Oscar  were  present.  The 
charming  enthusiasm  with  which  Oscar  had 
welcomed  Arnold  warmed  our  intercourse  to 
immediate  intimacy. 

"How  delightful  to  meet  you,  Master  1"  he 
cried.  "To  find  Oxford  and  all  the  charm  of 
Oxford  here  in  London,  with  our  host  to  suggest 
another  life  that  certainly  is  not  the  life  of  Ox- 
ford;" and  he  laughed  roguishly,  with  a  touch 
of  malice  that  set  us  all  smiling. 

Matthew  Arnold  was  evidently  flattered  by  his 
enthusiasm,  and  the  dinner  was  a  really  wonder- 
ful symposium  from  the  beginning;  more  mag- 
ical I  cannot  but  think  than  that  symposium  of 
Plato  in  which  Socrates  revealed  the  highest 
reach  of  the  Greek  spirit. 

Any  one  of  these  men  could  have  talked  as 
lyrically  about  beauty,   if  he  had  wished,  as 

212 


Socrates  talked,  and  Oscar  could  certainly  have 
talked  better.  What,  after  all,  did  the  Greek 
say  but  what  we  all  knew  and  felt;  that  one 
worships  first  the  beauty  of  form  and  color  and 
then  the  beauty  of  great  lives  nobly  lived,  and  so 
we're  led  to  the  feet  of  that  supernal  loveliness  of 
which  all  our  creations  are  only  reflections, 
shadow-shapes  of  the  divine  made  palpable. 

I  do  not  know  how  the  conversation  fell  on 
style,  but  I  remember  desiring  a  definition  of  it. 

Neither  of  the  poets  would  attempt  any 
formula  for  poetry,  but  Pater  said  he  had  some 
ideas  about  style  that  he  was  going  to  put  on 
paper  and  I  begged  him  to  send  me  the  essay  as 
soon  as  it  was  completed,  which  he  afterwards 
did.  It  is  not  important;  has  no  place,  I  think, 
in  his  best  work. 

But  on  the  question  of  prose  style  they  all  had 
opinions.  Oscar  thought  that  a  perfect  prose 
style  should  be  the  style  of  conversation  at  its 
best;  "interspersed,  of  course,"  he  added  laugh- 
ing, "with  lyrical  monologues";  and  he  smiled 
with  pleasure  at  having  defended  his  own  prac- 
tice. 

"I  do  not  altogether  agree  with  you,"  Matthew 
Arnold  objected: 

"Surely  the  style  of  conversation  is  a  little  too 
light,  too  loose,  too  careless.  I  should  say  there 
must  be  something  monumental  in  perfect  style; 
phrases  such  as  one  would  write  on  a  memorial 

213 


tablet;  there  should  be  a  sententious  brevity,  a 
weightiness  about  any  utterance  that  is  intended 
to  endure." 

"Would  you  alter  that  definition?"  I  asked 
Pater. 

"I  don't  think  prose  has  anything  to  do  with 
talk,"  he  answered.  "I  think  it  should  be  a  per- 
fect expression  of  one's  thought,  but  whether  it 
is  like  conversation  or  not  seems  to  me  of  no 
moment." 

Max  has  since  found  the  perfect  word  for 
Pater's  prose,  putting  his  finger  at  once  on  its 
excellence  and  its  defect:  "Pater,"  he  said, 
"writes  English  as  if  he  were  writing  Latin ;  he 
handles  it  as  if  it  were  a  dead  language." 

"And  you,"  said  Matthew  Arnold,  turning  to 
me,  "you  question  us  all,  but  you  do  not  tell  us 
your  idea." 

Challenged  in  this  way  I  could  only  speak 
frankly: 

"I  like  Boileau's  phrase:  un  style  simple, 
serieux,  scrupuleux  va  loin;  but  style  to  me,"  I 
added,  "has  a  thousand  individualities.  Style  is 
the  way  great  men  talk.  That's  the  only  defi- 
nition which  would  include  the  chiselled  sen- 
tences of  Pater  and  your  fluid  Addisonian  Eng- 
lish and  Oscar's  lyrical  outbursts." 

"Perhaps  you  are  right,"  Arnold  remarked 
reflectively.    "At  any  rate  it  would  be  hard  to 

214 


put  it  better  in  an  epigram.  'Style  is  the  way 
great  men  talk.'  " 

Pater  and  Oscar  had  a  rooted  regard  for  each 
other  and,  what  was  better,  a  thoroughgoing  ad- 
miration for  each  other's  talent.  Oscar  always 
spoke  of  Pater's  prose  as  the  best  in  English  lit- 
erature, while  Pater  admired  Wilde's  sunny 
humor  and  charming  talent  as  a  talker  from  the 
bottom  of  his  heart  and  without  a  spice  of  envy. 

Now  in  this  paper,  now  in  that,  Oscar  re- 
viewed whatever  Pater  wrote  and  usually  with 
intense  appreciation.  There  always  seemed  to 
me  a  tinge  of  the  admiration  of  pupil  for  pro- 
fessor in  Oscar's  exaggerated  estimate  of  Pater's 
merits.  Pater's  careful  meticulous  craftsman- 
ship was  so  different  from  Oscar's  improvisa- 
tions that  mutual  admiration  was  to  be  expected; 
the  two  talents  being  almost  complementary. 

In  1890  Oscar's  story,  "The  Picture  of  Dorian 
Gray,"  appeared  in  Lippincott's  Magazine.  It 
was  attacked  on  all  hands  in  England  with  an 
insane  heat  and  virulent  malevolence.  I  ad- 
mired the  story  and  asked  Pater,  who  also  liked 
it,  to  write  an  appreciation  of  it  for  The  Fort- 
nightly. 

"Dangerous,  don't  you  think?  Very  danger- 
ous," was  his  reply.  "If  I  could  do  Oscar  any 
good  I  would  not  mind,  but  no  one  can  save  him. 
I  must  think  of  myself.  I  will  not  rush  in  now; 
perhaps  later  I'll  say  something.    Oscar  really 

215 


is  too  bold.  The  forces  against  him  are  over- 
whelming; sooner  or  later  he'll  come  to  grief." 
Others  had  seen  the  danger  even  earlier.  I 
remember  how  Rennell  Rodd  ten  years  before 
sent  a  copy  of  his  poems,  "Songs  in  the  South," 
to  Oscar  with  this  prophetic  verse  in  Italian : 

Al  tuo  martirio  cupida  e  feroce 
Questa  turba  cui  parli  accorrera; 
Ti  vertammo  a  veder  sulla  tua  croce 
Tutti,  e  nessuno  ti  compiagnera. 

Which  may  be  Englished:  "At  thy  martyrdom 
this  greedy  and  cruel  crowd  to  whom  thou  art 
talking  will  assemble;  they  will  all  run  to  see 
thee  on  the  Cross  and  not  one  will  pity  thee." 

A  year  and  a  half  later,  in  November,  1891, 
when  the  storm  of  slander  and  opprobrium  had 
blown  itself  out,  Pater  wrote  of  "Dorian  Gray" 
in  the  Bookman  and  praised  it  warmly.  Even 
then  it  might  be  called  a  brave  act,  an  extraordi- 
nary gesture  for  Pater,  I  felt,  though  I  did  not 
yet  know  what  constrained  him  to  such  caution. 

I  met  him  shortly  afterwards. 

"Fine  work,"  I  exclaimed,  "not  only  as  criti- 
cism, but  because  you  ventured  to  praise  a  work 
that  everyone  is  still  damning  and  reviling." 

He  turned  his  eyes  on  me. 

"It  was  dangerous,"  he  said,  "but  a  duty,  I 
thought." 

The  phrase  struck  me. 
216 


Later  still,  some  time  after  "Marius  the  Epi- 
curean," that  he  always  regarded  as  his  master- 
piece, had  been  published,  we  lunched  together 
and  talked  of  Puritanism  and  its  numbing,  with- 
ering effects  on  all  the  rarest  flowers  of  art  and 
literature. 

"Why  did  you  bow  to  it?"  I  asked.  "If  you 
had  opposed  it  stoutly  you  could  have  killed  it." 

"No,  no,"  he  cried,  getting  up  and  paling  at 
the  very  thought.  "It  would  have  killed  me. 
As  it  was,  I  was  too  bold   .    .    .   impossible." 

At  the  time  I  could  not  for  the  life  of  me 
understand  Pater's  dread  of  public  opinion,  the 
unmanly  shrinking  from  any  conflict  with  the 
dominant  forces  of  the  day.  I  put  it  all  down 
to  English  subservience  to  authority  and  con- 
gratulated myself  on  being  heir  to  a  larger  lib- 
erty, and  subject  of  a  government  founded  in 
rebellion,  sanctified  by  successful  revolt.  I  had 
no  idea  then  that  the  United  States,  too,  a  few 
years  later,  would  prefer  the  Tsar  Wilson  theory 
of  government  to  that  of  Jefferson. 

About  this  time  I  published  Pater's  essay  on 
Merim^e  in  The  Fortnightly,  and  that  led  to 
frequent  talks  about  the  author  of  Carmen,  who 
had  for  years  been  one  of  my  minor  idols.  Mer- 
im^e  touched  life  at  many  points  and  always 
as  a  master;  he  was  an  intimate  of  Napoleon  the 
Third  and  had  a  certain  influence  on  French 
policy  for  ten  or  fifteen  troubled  years,  and  at  the 

217 


same  time  without  any  apprenticeship  showed 
himself  an  artist  and  writer  of  the  best. 

Pater  shared  my  enthusiasm  and  that  brought 
us  together,  and  so  gradually,  the  years  helping, 
we  came  to  be  friends  and  more  or  less  intimate. 

One  day  in  Park  Lane  after  lunch  I  got  some- 
how or  other  on  a  new  theme  with  him. 

"What  have  been  the  chief  pleasures  in  life  to 
you?"  I  asked. 

"Many,"  he  replied  simply;  "the  chief  of  them 
connected  with  art  or  letters — with  beauty  in 
some  of  its  infinite  modes.  To  find  a  church  like 
that  dedicated  to  the  Magdalen  at  Vezelay;  to 
come  across  an  exquisite  phrase  in  one's  read- 
ing; a  phrase  like  a  flower  on  the  page,  perfect 
in  form  and  color.  To  be  able  to  lift  it  up 
and  show  it  to  others — a  divine  pleasure;  or  to 
hear  a  man  talking  really  brilliantly,  like  Oscar 
talks  sometimes,  as  if  inspired. 

"But  perhaps  the  greatest  of  all  earthly  de- 
lights is  the  joy  of  creation.  To  write  even  one 
sentence  absolutely,  the  garment  outlining  the 
thought  perfectly;  not  fitting  too  closely,  it  would 
be  ungraceful ;  yet  not  too  loose,  or  too  ornate  it 
would  draw  attention  to  the  garment  and  so 
appear  affected,  but  just  right,  revealing  more 
than  the  naked  truth  can  possibly  reveal,  with 
a  subtler  evocation  of  beauty,  a  haunting  seduc- 
tion of  rhythm. 

"What  a  delight  to  have  created  one  perfect 
218 


sentence;  one  phrase  that  some  other  lettered 
reader  must  pick  out  and  repeat  to  himself  and 
go  about  with  as  one  goes  about  with  some  rare 
jewel.  The  joys  of  the  creative  artist  are  surely 
the  rarest  and  the  highest  in  the  world." 

"But  has  life  itself  held  nothing  better  than  art 
for  you?"  I  questioned.  "Your  devotion  to  books 
always  puzzles  me.  I  find  life  so  much  more 
wonderful  than  any  transcript  of  it,  however 
exquisite.  For  instance,  you  speak  of  the  Venus 
of  Milo  with  bated  breath  as  of  an  impeccable, 
unapproachable  loveliness,  and  in  statuary  you 
may  be  right;  but  in  life  I  have  seen  two  or  three 
girls'  figures  out  of  all  comparison  more  beauti- 
ful than  any  Venus.  I  know  a  little  cabaret 
dancer  in  Monmartre  with  a  figure  more  perfect 
than  those  on  the  frieze  of  the  Temple  to  Nike 
Apteros.  , 

"You  were  probably  the  first  to  see  and  say 
that  all  the  spiritual  influences  of  the  past  are 
working  together  to  create  finer  and  finer  types 
of  beauty.  Why  not  go  to  life  as  the  source  and 
spring  instead  of  drinking  out  of  some  other 
man's  cup?" 

"You  may  be  right,"  Pater  replied  thought- 
fully. "I  remember  often  strolling  through  the 
meadows  to  the  river  bank  at  Oxford  and  watch- 
ing the  students  bathing.  I  can  still  conjure  up 
the  lissom  white  figures  against  the  green  back- 
ground, still  see  one  youth  poised  on  the  bank 

219 


with  his  hands  above  his  head  preparing  to 
plunge.  There  he  stood  outlined  like  a  Greek 
god  with  the  sunlight  gilding  his  white  limbs  as 
if  amorous  of  their  rounded  beauty" — then,  with 
a  sigh,  the  return:  "Life  is  infinitely  seductive, 
but  books  are  safer,  much  safer;  our  mild  clois- 
tered pleasures.     .     .     ." 

Somehow  I  felt  that  even  to  remember  the 
vision  at  Oxford  was  peculiar,  personal;  that 
"mild  cloistered  pleasures,"  too,  constituted  a 
confession. 

Curiously  enough,  we  both  enjoyed  good  food 
and  good  wine,  and  there  happened  to  be  in  those 
early  nineties  a  superlative  champagne  whose 
like  has  scarcely  been  seen  since — Perrier  Jouet 
74.  I  talked  of  it  once  to  Pater — I  don't  know 
why.  I  asked  him  to  come  and  try  a  magnum 
of  it.  (A  magnum  is  a  large  bottle  containing 
nearly  two  quarts.)  Pater  thought  a  magnum 
would  be  too  much,  but  I  insisted  that  the  wine 
was  better  in  the  larger  bottle. 

He  agreed  to  come,  and  we  had  a  great  din- 
ner: zakoushki  at  first;  followed  by  slices  of  roast 
beef  (a  Scotch  sirloin  roasted  on  a  spit  before 
a  fire),  and  the  invigorating  champagne.  A 
magnum  hardly  satisfied  our  legitimate  thirst, 
and  so  we  had  a  bottle  of  Comet  port  to  follow 
all  cobwebbed  without  and  caked  within;  yet 
glowing  with  generous  warmth  and  a  bouquet 
that  from  time  to  time  drifted  across  the  sweet 

220 


intoxication  with  lyrical  interbreathing,  so  to 
speak,  of  soul-seducing  perfume. 

Early  in  the  evening  we  began  talking  of 
Shakespeare,  the  only  literary  subject  at  that  time 
on  which  I  felt  sure  of  being  Pater's  equal.  The 
second  or  third  glass  of  port  transfigured  Pater 
and  brought  out  his  self-assertion,  the  real  man. 

"Of  course,"  he  cried,  ''Shakespeare  was  one 
of  the  greatest  of  men,  the  most  articulate  crea- 
ture that  ever  lived;  but  think  of  his  scoriae,  my 
dear  fellow,  the  dull,  stupid,  windy  eulogies  of 
rank  and  hierarchy,  the  dreadful  scoriae  of 
Shakespeare." 

A  little  later  he  returned  to  the  charge. 

"In  all  he  has  only  written  a  dozen  wonderful 
pages,  and  if  I  have  written  one,  as  you  are  kind 
enough  to  say,  why  should  I  bow  down  before 
him? 

"I  dislike  in  my  heart  all  this  idolatry  of  the 
past;  Shakespeare  was  only  one  of  us — primus 
inter  pares — if  you  like — the  first  among  his 
peers  and  equals,  but  that  is  all;  nothing  tran- 
scendent or  demanding  reverence  in  him — 
nothing." 

When  I  accompanied  him  to  the  door  a  little 
later  and  gave  the  hansom  driver  his  address, 
for  the  fresh  night  air  had  helped  the  fumes  of 
the  wine.  Pater  stopped  me  as  I  was  helping  him 
into  the  cab.  "Don't  forget,  my  dear  fellow," 
he  said,  with  the  gravity  peculiar  to  his  state; 

221  > 


"never  forget  the  scoriae  of  Shakespeare."  And 
in  the  cab  as  he  drove  away,  he  was  still  repeat- 
ing "the  scoriae,  the  scoriae  of  Shakespeare." 

Next  day  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  come  into 
touch  with  the  very  soul  of  Pater :  a  true  artist, 
he  could  not  forgive  the  greatest  of  writers  his 
heedlessness,  his  scoriae. 

If  Pater  had  had  a  little  more  courage,  I  said 
to  myself,  a  little  more  vitality  and  hotter  blood, 
the  richer  life  the  wine  called  forth  in  him,  he 
would  have  been  another  Gautier;  a  guide  to 
lead  Englishmen  out  of  the  prison  of  puritan- 
ism  ;  for  he  hated  the  senseless  restrictions  of  the 
outgrown  creed,  and  if  he  had  had  greater 
strength  he  would  have  led  the  revolt. 

Pater  never  married,  has  never  been  accused 
of  a  love  affair  with  any  woman,  and  he  died  of 
a  weak  heart  at  fifty-four  in  spite  of  regular 
careful  living;  these  facts  explain  to  me  all  the 
man's  weakness — his  abnormal  caution,  his  hesi- 
tancy, his  reticence. 

Had  Pater  had  a  strong  heart  he  might  have 
given  us  a  dozen  pages  as  fine  as  that  on  Lady 
Lisa.  As  it  is,  he  has  written  perhaps  the  finest 
page  in  all  English  prose,  and  that  is  enough  for 
any  man's  measure. 

When  Arthur  Benson's  "Life  of  Pater"  was 
published  about  1911,  I  found  that  he  had  made 
Pater  out  to  have  become  a  devout  Christian  in 
the  last  years  of  his  life.    I  wrote  a  passionate 

222 


indignant,  contemptuous  protest  in  a  London 
paper,  John  Bull,    Here  are  Benson's  words: 

"We  may  think  of  him  as  one  who  .... 
was  deeply  penetrated  by  the  perfect  beauty  and 
holiness  of  the  Christian  ideal,  and  reposed  in 
trembling  faith  on  *the  bosom  of  his  Father  and 
his  God.'  " 

Pater  on  the  bosom  of  his  Father  and  his  God ; 
Pater  who  in  those  last  years  often  called  Chris- 
tianity the  beautiful  disease,  the  white  leprosy 
of  the  spirit!  Never  was  there  a  more  disgrace- 
ful perversion  of  truth,  a  more  flagrant  outrage 
on  fact.  But  Benson  didn't  mind;  he  had  made 
his  little  bleating,  and  that  was  all  he  cared  for 
seemingly,  just  to  win  a  cheap  popularity  with 
a  preposterous  falsehood.  I  have  done  my  best 
here  and  elsewhere  to  kill  the  lie,  but  it  persists 
and  demands  stronger  measures.  The  deepest 
fact  in  Pater's  spiritual  make-up  was  his  recog- 
nition that  it  was  a  good  thing  to  be  free  of  the 
dreadful  doubtings  of  our  childhood. 

This  world  was  always  "unintelligible"  to  him. 
In  perhaps  his  last  essay,  that  on  Pascal,  he  tells 
how  Pascal  owing  to  a  nervous  shock  was  con- 
tinually haunted  by  the  feeling  that  there  was  an 
abyss  there,  by  his  side,  and  he  would  place  a 
chair  or  stick  on  it  to  chase  away  the  delusion. 

Pater  himself  suffered  from  the  same  malady. 
He  writes  of  Pascal's  Pensees — "those  great  fine 
sayings  which  seem  to  betray  by  their  depth  of 

223 


sound  the  vast  unseen  hollow  places  of  nature, 
of  humanity,  just  beneath  one's  feet  or  at  one's 
side." 

Pater  was  always  conscious  that  the  abyss  was 
close  to  him,  beneath  his  feet. 

Pater's  place  in  literature,  one  fancies,  is  se- 
cure. He  is  not  of  the  Sacred  Band  of  spiritual 
adventurers  who  lead  forlorn  hopes  or  cross  un- 
charted seas  to  discover  new  continents;  but  he 
has  gone  out  of  the  beaten  track  and  found  a  new 
headland  and  taken  possession  of  it  and  given 
it  his  own  name.  We  think  of  him  as  we  might 
think  of  Keats  had  he  written  nothing  but  the 
Sonnet  on  Chapman's  Homer.  Pater  had  not 
much  to  say,  but  he  had  one  idea,  and  that  im- 
portant, and  he  said  it  superbly  and  for  all  time. 

There  is  no  vivid,  creative  genius  in  his  work. 
His  Leonardo  even  does  not  live  for  us,  and  when 
we  enquire  about  the  Italian's  loves  and  hates, 
tastes  and  amusements,  we  become  conscious  how 
little  Pater  knows  of  the  man.  It  is  by  what  you 
take  delight  in  that  you  discover  your  real  na- 
ture; trahit  cuique  sua  voluptas. 

Pater  is  more  interested  in  Leonardo's  paint- 
ings than  in  his  personality;  in  the  incidents  of 
his  life  than  in  the  growth  of  his  spirit.  Yet 
even  in  this  thin  sketch  he  can  find  time  to  speak 
of  a  drawing  in  red  chalk — "a  face  of  doubtful 
sex,"  and  he  tells  us  of  the  "youthful  head  which 
love  chooses  for  his  own — the  head  of  a  young 

224 


man  which  may  well  be  the  likeness  of  Andrea 
Salaino,  beloved  of  Leonardo  for  his  curled  and 
waving  hair." 

I  think  the  last  sentence  he  wrote  in  this  essay 
is  perhaps  the  completest  revelation  of  himself 
which  Pater  could  give  in  a  single  phrase : 

"We  forget  them  (the  offices  of  religion)  in 
speculating  how  one  who  had  been  always  so 
desirous  of  beauty,  but  desired  it  always  in  such 
precise  and  definite  forms,  as  hands  or  flowers 
or  hair,  looked  forward  now  into  the  vague  land, 
and  experienced  the  last  curiosity." 

But  scattered  through  his  works  here  and 
there  are  sentences  almost  as  significant:  striving 
to  reveal  himself,  he  says,  in  an  early  essay  that 
he  was  one  in  whom  the  love  of  beauty  had 
usurped  the  place  of  the  ethical  faculty. 

In  his  essay  on  Winckelmann  Pater  is  even 
franker.  He  knew  that  Winckelmann  never 
came  near  the  Greek  spirit  of  the  best  time;  like 
Lessing,  he  mistook  the  Laocoon  for  a  master- 
piece; but  Winckelmann  had  been  notorious  for 
abnormal  perversity,  and  so  Pater  was  curious 
about  him  and  wrote  of  him  at  great  length, 
dwarfing  him  with  a  pedestal  altogether  too 
lofty.  There  is  a  phrase  or  two  in  this  essay  in 
which  Pater  unveils  his  heart  to  us.  He  quotes 
the  following  passage  from  Winckelmann : 

"I  have  noticed  that  those  who  are  observant 
of  beauty  only  in  women,  and  are  moved  little 

225 


or  not  at  all  by  the  beauty  of  men,  seldom  have 
an  impartial,  vital,  inborn  instinct  for  beauty  in 
art.  To  such  persons  the  beauty  of  Greek  art 
will  ever  seem  wanting,  because  its  supreme 
beauty  is  rather  male  than  female." 

Now  that  is  exaggerated  to  untruth,  and  by  its 
falsity  throws  a  high  light  on  Winckelmann's 
abnormality.  But  there  is  one  sentence  even 
more  soul-revealing  than  this.  Speaking  of  at- 
tachments between  men  Pater  says: 

*'Of  passion,  of  physical  excitement,  they 
(such  attachments)  contain  only  just  so  much 
as  stimulates  the  eye  to  the  finest  delicacies  of 
colour  and  form." 

In  other  words,  Pater's  perversity  is  mainly 
mental,  or  to  put  it  in  another  way,  his  physical 
hold  on  life  was  so  slight  that  his  desire  merely 
led  him  to  a  finer  appreciation  of  the  beauties  of 
art — the  sanctities,  as  I  have  called  them,  in  his 
own  spirit,  the  sanctities  of  plastic  loveliness. 


226 


Herbert  Spencer 


HERBERT  SPENCER:  PHILOSOPHER 

EREDITH  says  in  one  of  his  letters, 
if  I  remember  rightly,  that  it  is  not 
well  for  any  man  to  be  praised  too 
much  in  his  lifetime.  The  phrase 
struck  me  because  the  truth  had  been 
made  plain  to  me  through  my  acquaintance  with 
Herbert  Spencer  long  before. 

I  must  begin  by  saying  that  I  am  not  an  ad- 
mirer of  so-called  "philosophers."  The  best  of 
them  seem  to  me  to  have  had  a  glimpse  or  two 
of  new  truth  and  to  have  battered  out  the  tiny 
speck  of  golden  thought  over  innumerable  pages, 
trying  to  make  an  idea  or  two  into  a  system. 

Kant,  for  example,  saw  the  relativity  of  space 
and  time,  and  with  that  and  a  hair-splitting 
difference  between  reason  and  understanding 
composed  a  huge  book,  turning  even  platitudes 
into  puzzles. 

Bacon  and  Schopenhauer  are  to  me  the  great- 
est of  thinkers,  but  I  prefer  Bacon's  essays  to 
his  more  ponderous  treatises,  and  Schopen- 
hauer's critical  writings  are  more  valuable  to 
me  because  more  readable  than  his  "World  as 
Will  and  Appearance."  Plato,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  can  rejoice  in  with  my  whole  soul ;  but 

227 


he  is  rather  an  artist  in  thought  than  a  thinker — 
a  poet  rather  than  a  philosopher. 

From  the  popularity  he  has  acquired  in  a 
dozen  European  countries  one  feels  pretty  cer- 
tain that  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  will  be  cited 
among  the  great  philosophers  of  the  future,  yet 
I  think  his  accomplishment  small,  his  contribu- 
tion to  the  sum  of  truth  of  slight  importance. 

I  remember  Huxley  praising  him  one  day, 
and  when  I  objected  he  told  me  that  Herbert 
Spencer  had  done  almost  as  much  for  the  theory 
of  evolution  as  Darwin  himself.  I  pointed  out 
that  the  theory  was  more  or  less  in  the  air  of 
the  time  and  that  all  good  minds  had  had  an 
inkling  of  it.  He  admitted  that  there  was  some 
truth  in  my  contention,  but  stuck  to  his  high 
estimate  of  Spencer. 

I  could  not  agree  with  him.  Coleridge,  I 
argued,  had  grasped  the  theory  of  evolution  half 
a  century  before  Darwin;  had  even  seen  in  talk- 
ing of  artistic  creation  that  a  man  grows  from 
the  simple  to  the  complex. 

Huxley  seemed  interested,  but  Spencer  was  a 
fetish  to  him. 

In  the  late  eighties  I  met  Herbert  Spencer  in 
London  rather  frequently.  The  first  impression 
he  made  on  me  was  of  physical  weakness  and 
age.  He  was  of  middle  height  or  thereabouts; 
very  thin  and  withered,  with  a  large  forehead 
and  head  which  dwarfed  the  figure.  I  thought  of 

228 


him  as  a  sort  of  animated  tadpole.  He  seemed 
pinched  and  desiccated  with  age,  his  expression 
one  of  querulous  impatience  as  of  a  man  who  has 
suffered  a  great  deal  and  become  embittered. 

In  one  of  our  early  conversations  he  told  me 
that  he  regarded  George  Eliot  as  the  greatest 
woman  novelist  in  English.  I  ventured  to  say 
that  it  would  be  very  hard  indeed  to  oust  Jane 
Austin  from  that  position,  and  for  myself  I  pre- 
ferred Emily  Bronte  to  either  of  them. 

He  took  time  to  formulate  his  thought  and 
then  replied  like  an  oracle: 

"I  regard  George  Eliot  not  only  as  the  great- 
est woman  novelist,  but  as  the  greatest  woman 
that  ever  lived.  A  woman  of  masculine  under- 
standing and  intelligence,  a  woman  who  makes 
one  hope  that  in  time  women  may  come  to  be 
the  equals  of  men." 

I  let  the  pompous  judgment  pass,  but  I  would 
give  a  dozen  George  Eliots  and  Spencers  to 
boot  for  one  Joan  D'Arc  or  Charlotte  Corday. 

I  remember  meeting  Spencer  once  in  Hyde 
Park  about  one  o'clock  and  asking  him  to  lunch. 

"I  have  to  be  very  careful  about  what  I  eat," 
he  said;  "anything  rich  disagrees  with  me." 

I  assured  him  that  I  only  liked  simple  things, 
too,  and  so  we  lunched  together. 

I  was  eager  to  find  out  one  thing  which  had 
always  puzzled  me  in  his  work;  he  seemed  to 
have  a  curious  blind  spot  in  his  intelligence. 

239 


I  suppose  he  was  the  first  to  treat  the  nation 
as  a  body  corporate  and  to  speak  of  the  railroads 
and  roads  as  the  veins  and  arteries  and  the  elec- 
tric wires  as  nerves.  He  was  perhaps  the  first, 
too,  to  state  what  some  of  us  saw  before  reading 
him,  that  pressure  from  the  outside  increases 
the  amount  of  cohesion  among  individuals  in  the 
body  corporate;  that  where  you  have  great  pres- 
sure from  the  outside,  as  for  example  in  Ger- 
many, there  will  be  great  cohesion;  where  you 
have  little  outside  pressure,  as  in  America  and 
Great  Britain,  the  atoms  that  compose  the  social 
organism  will  tend  to  fall  apart  and  there  will 
be  a  great  deal  of  what  is  known  as  individual 
liberty,  and  individual  self-assertion. 

But  this  law  of  physics  does  not  go  far  to 
explain  human  society;  Spencer  was  suddenly 
confronted  with  the  fact  that  in  Britain,  when 
individual  liberty  was  at  its  height  and  the  state 
hardly  counted,  a  great  movement  towards  so- 
cialism made  itself  felt.  Trades  unions  sprang 
up  on  all  hands,  vast  co-operative  societies 
among  workingmen,  and  private  societies,  too, 
in  the  guise  of  joint-stock  companies. 

Herbert  Spencer  accepted  this  "voluntary  co- 
operation," as  he  called  it,  as  a  sign  of  progress, 
but  the  nationalization  of  railroads  and  other 
public  utilities  seemed  to  him  a  mistake;  all 
,  industries,  he  thought,  could  be  better  managed 
by  the  individual. 

230 


I  was  very  eager  to  learn  whether  he  saw  that 
this  predilection  in  favor  of  individualism  was 
a  mere  result  of  his  having  been  born  and  bred 
in  Britain,  and  so  I  put  it  to  him  that  we  had 
entered  into  a  new  era  and  that  state  socialism 
was  everjrwhere  coming  into  being. 

I  was  astonished  to  find  that  he  would  not 
admit  this  new  theory  at  all;  would  not  even 
let  himself  discuss  it  reasonably;  and  when  I 
pointed  out  that  the  railroads  in  Germany  under 
state  ownership  had  done  better  than  any  pri- 
vately owned  railroads  anywhere,  and  therefore 
urged  that  all  public  utilities  should  be  nation- 
alized, he  exclaimed  tartly: 

"I  cannot  agree  with  you  at  all.  It  is  pure 
heresy.  The  individual  is  always  a  more  com- 
petent director  of  labor  than  the  State." 

"But  there  are  departments  of  industry,"  I 
objected,  "so  great  that  an  individual  cannot 
control  them  alone.  Do  you  mean  also  that  vol- 
untary co-operation  of  individuals  in  joint  stock 
companies  is  more  effective  than  state  owner- 
ship?" 

"Certainly,  certainly,"  he  replied. 

I  reminded  him  that  Stanley  Jevons  had  once 
demonstrated  that  joint  stock  company  manage- 
ment had  every  possible  fault  of  State  manage- 
ment with  none  of  its  advantages.  I  regarded 
this  fact  as  an  established,  self-evident  truth. 

"Self-evident  nonsense,"  he  barked,  trembling 
231 


from  head  to  foot  in  his  excitement.  "I  do  not 
agree  with  you  at  all.  In  my  books  I  have  set 
forth  the  truth,  and  I  think  established  it.  Every 
first-rate  man  I  have  ever  met  has  had  nothing 
but  praise  and  admiration  for  my  work,  and 
now  to  find  it  called  in  question  is  distressing  to 
me  and  I  must  not  be  distressed.  Such  discus- 
sion hurts  my  heart,  makes  it  beat  faster,  and  I 
cannot  have  my  heart's  action  deranged." 

He  spoke  with  such  peevish  irritability,  such 
angry  ill-temper,  that  I  could  only  apologize. 

"I  am  very  sorry,"  I  purred;  "I  had  no  idea 
that  you  would  mind  discussing  anything  so  long 
as  one  tried  to  be  reasonable.  I  am  very  sorry. 
We  will  talk  of  something  else." 

"I  am  reasonable,"  he  persisted,  still  in  the 
pettish,  vexed  voice.  "I  am  reasonable,  but  I 
cannot  bear  contradiction.  I  am  not  strong 
enough  to  argue.  I  must  go,"  and  away  he 
toddled  to  the  door. 

I  went  downstairs  with  him  out  of  courtesy, 
repeating:  "I  am  very  sorry;  I  had  no  idea;  pray 
forgive  me." 

At  the  front-door  he  stopped,  and  I  thought 
he  had  stopped  to  excuse  his  puerile  bad  tem- 
per, so  I  smiled  at  him  deprecatingly,  for  I 
really  felt  sorry  that  I  had  annoyed  him. 

"My  health  has  never  been  strong,"  he  com- 
plained in  the  same  querulous,  acrid,  thin  voice. 
"I  wish  I  had  brought  my  ear-stoppers  with  me, 

232 


then  I  need  not  have  heard,"  he  snapped.  ^'1 
must  not  forget  them  in  the  future.  I  cannot 
endure  contradiction;  it  excites  me  unduly. 
Good-day  to  you,"  and  away  he  went,  leaving 
me  not  knowing  whether  to  be  sorry  or  to  laugh. 

Too  much  adulation,  I  thought,  had  turned 
the  old  fellow's  brain,  and  he  had  given  up 
thinking  for  pontificating. 

Whenever  I  heard  the  word  "philosopher" 
afterwards,  I  smiled,  thinking  of  Spencer  and 
his  ear-stoppers.  Without  a  healthy  body,  I  said 
to  myself,  there  is  no  health  in  thought  or  spirit. 
But  had  I  known  more,  I  should  have  been  more 
considerate,  as  I  shall  show  in  due  course. 

A  good  many  years  elapsed  before  I  heard  of 
Spencer's  death  and  then  of  the  publication  of 
his  "Autobiography."  I  could  not  help  wonder- 
ing what  sort  of  a  life-story  he  had  had  and 
how  he  had  written  it.  He  had  never  married, 
was  commonly  supposed  never  to  have  felt  any 
liking  for  any  woman  except  George  Eliot;  on 
the  other  hand,  he  had  lived  to  a  great  age,  had 
come  early  to  reputation;  had  been  a  member 
of  the  Athenaeum  Club  for  forty  years;  had  met 
all  the  English  celebrities  of  his  time  and  must 
have  left  most  interesting  memories. 

I  sent  for  the  book ;  two  huge  volumes  of  600 
pages  each,  some  400,000  words  at  least — a 
windy  herol  And  there  was  no  story,  so  to  say, 
at  all;  no  romance;  no  youthful  love  affair;  no 

233 


mature  passion;  no  exciting  or  extraordinary 
happening,  except  the  fact  that  his  American 
admirers  had  subscribed  some  $7,000  and  given 
it  to  him,  midway  in  his  career,  to  pay  the  ex- 
penses of  publishing  his  works.  Though  Spen- 
cer's whole  life  was  narrated  in  great  detail  and 
every  personal  trait — mental,  physical  and  path- 
ological, minutely  described,  there  was  no  living 
person  in  the  book:  analysis  is  not  creation. 

Curiously  enough,  Carlyle,  whom  Spencer 
disliked,  comes  nearer  to  living  than  anyone  else 
mentioned  in  these  dreary  pages.  Spencer  calls 
him  "a  queer  creature";  characterizes  his  talk 
as  "little  else  than  a  continued  tirade  against  'the 
horrible,  abominable  state  of  things'  .... 
epithet  piled  on  epithet,  and  always  the  strongest 
he  can  find.  .  .  .  He  is  evidently  fond  of  a 
laugh,  and  laughs  heartily.  .  .  .  His  wife  is 
intelligent,  but  quite  warped  by  him." 

After  saying  that  he  only  saw  him  three  or 
four  times  in  all,  Spencer  adds:  "I  found  that 
I  must  either  listen  to  his  absurd  dogmas  in 
silence,  which  it  was  not  my  nature  to  do,  or  get 
into  fierce  argument  with  him,  which  ended  in 
our  glaring  at  one  another." 

And  then  the  summing  up,  at  once  curiously 
characteristic  of  Spencer  and  a  little  unfair: 

"Lewes  used  to  say  of  him  that  he  was  a  poet 
without  music;  and  to  some,  his  denunciations 
have  suggested  the  comparison  of  him  to  an  old 

234 


Hebrew  prophet.  For  both  of  these  character- 
izations much  may  be  said.  By  others  he  has, 
strange  to  say,  been  classed  as  a  philosopher! 
Considering  that  he  either  could  not  or  would 
not  think  coherently — never  set  out  from  prem- 
ises and  reasoned  his  way  to  conclusions,  but 
habitually  dealt  in  intuitions  and  dogmatic  as- 
sertions, he  lacked  the  trait  which,  perhaps  more 
than  any  other,  distinguishes  the  philosopher 
properly  so  called.  He  lacked  also  a  further 
trait.  Instead  of  thinking  calmly,  as  the  philoso- 
pher above  all  others  does,  he  thought  in  a  pas- 
sion. It  would  take  much  seeking  to  find  one 
whose  intellect  was  perturbed  by  emotion  in  the 
same  degree."  Or  "guided  by  emotion"  shall  we 
say,  Mr.  Spencer;  for  Vauvenargues  has  taught 
us  that  "all  great  thoughts  come  from  the  heart." 

It  is  worth  noting  as  characteristic  that 
Spencer  should  have  come  nearer  to  picturing 
Carlyle  through  dislike  than  George  Eliot 
through  liking  and  sincere  admiration.  The 
truth  is  his  dislikes  were  stronger  than  his  lik- 
ings, though  both  were  rather  tepid,  far  too 
tepid  ever  to  have  suggested  to  him  an  artist's 
passion  or  artist  phrases.  Many  a  philosopher 
is  made  by  poor  blood  and  lukewarm  feelings: 
weakness  masking  as  impartiality. 

Spencer  is  unable  even  to  give  us  a  vivid  pic- 
ture of  George  Eliot.  If  you  read  between  the 
lines,  however,  you  will  find  that,  in  spite  of  his 

235 


admiration  for  her  mind  and  character  and  her 
discipleship,  he  could  not  love  her  because  she 
was  too  homely.  Apropos  of  nothing  at  all,  he 
suddenly  writes:  "Physical  beauty  is  a  sine  qua 
non  with  me;  as  was  once  unhappily  proved 
where  the  intellectual  traits  and  the  emotional 
traits  were  of  the  highest." 

An  incident  will  show  more  completely  the 
relationship  between  the  two: 

One  of  my  earliest  memories  of  London  is  of 
an  evening  spent  in  the  house  of  George  Eliot. 

Was  she  Mrs.  Lewes  at  the  time  or  Mrs. 
Cross?  I  forget;  George  Eliot  always  to  me: 
I  forget,  too,  where  the  house  was — somewhere 
near  Regent's  Park  I  think — I  can't  remember 
even  the  name  of  my  introducer;  yet  the  scene 
itself  is  unforgettable  to  me  and  as  vivid  as  if 
it  had  taken  place  yesterday. 

I  had  a  great  admiration  for  the  author  of 
"The  Mill  on  the  Floss."  I  was  influenced  by 
the  over-estimate  of  the  time  and  believed  her 
to  be  an  unique  woman,  a  great  writer,  one  of 
the  fixed  stars  in  the  firmament  of  literature; 
consequently  I  was  all  worked  up  with  expect- 
ancy and  hope. 

Her  appearance  shocked  me:  the  long  horse 
face,  the  pale  eyes,  the  gray,  thick  skin,  the 
skinny  hands;  surely,  I  said  to  myself,  genius 
never  wore  so  appalling,  so  commonplace  a 
mask;  grotesque  ugliness,  deformity  even  would 

236 


have  been  less  disappointing  to  me  than  this 
complete  absence  of  anything  arrestingly  sym- 
pathetic or  even  distinctive, 
being  a  student  in  Germany  (I  had  been  study- 
ing in  Heidelberg)  ;  said  she  ought  to  have  been 
a  man  and  a  German  student.  Herbert  Spencer, 
who  seemed  to  hold  the  center  of  the  stage, 
pursed  out  his  lips  and  said  something  about  the 
cruelty  and  bullying  of  the  German  corps-stu- 
dents; George  Eliot  agreed  with  him,  showing 
absurd  deference,  I  thought.  She  said  nothing 
of  any  weight  or  novelty  and  her  way  of  speak- 
ing was  distinguished  only  by  a  touch  of 
formality. 

At  that  time  Carlyle  was  the  only  other  celeb- 
rity I  had  met ;  but  how  different.  One  needed 
no  assurance  that  he  was  of  the  Immortals — a 
Titan,  if  ever  there  was  one;  he  never  talked  for 
talking's  sake;  never  used  second-hand  or  ordi- 
nary expressions;  always  spoke  significantly,  an 
authentic  prophet  and  seer. 

George  Eliot  turned  to  Spencer  again  and 
again  that  evening  with  curious  appeal  as  to  an 
oracle,  and  the  oracle  was  not  mystic  as  at  Del- 
phi, but  commonplace,  self-satisfied,  "school- 
mastery,"  I  said  to  myself  disdainfully — for  evi- 
dently he  knew  nothing  really  of  the  life  of  the 
German  corps-student.  He  seemed  to  me 
learned  perhaps,  but  not  wise;  I  had  no  rever- 

237 


ence  whatever  for  the  man. 

"What  can  she  see  in  him?"  I  kept  asking  my- 
self in  wonder. 

All  the  time  I  wanted  to  say  something  ex- 
pressive of  my  contempt  for  him  and  my  admir- 
ation for  her;  but  I  was  very  young  and  awed 
a  little  by  their  reputations;  did  not  feel  master 
of  the  situation,  so  kept  quiet  on  the  whole  and 
behaved  fairly  well,  I  hope. 

That  evening  showed  me  that  George  Eliot 
was  to  be  congratulated  on  her  escape  from 
Spencer;  his  companionship  developed  the 
rationalistic  side  of  her  nature  and  so  harmed 
her  as  an  artist  beyond  all  telling.  If  anyone 
cares  to  compare  "The  Scenes  from  Clerical 
Life,"  or  even  "Adam  Bede,"  or  "The  Mill  on 
the  Floss,"  with  "Daniel  Deronda,"  he  will 
realize  the  full  extent  of  the  artistic  injury  done 
her  by  long  and  close  association  with  Spencer. 
She  ought  to  have  been  brought  to  feel  more 
and  think  less;  whereas  she  was  encouraged  to 
think  and  reason  and  debate  instead  of  living 
and  loving. 

Carlyle  and  Spencer  always  seemed  to  me  the 
Plato  and  the  Aristotle  of  our  time,  and  I  have 
already  warned  my  readers  of  my  preference  for 
the  poet  or  artist,  even  as  steersman  of  the  ship. 
Carlyle  saw  incomparably  further  and  deeper 
than  Spencer,  saw  that  "the  present  horrible, 
abominable  state  of  things"  could  not  last,  that 

238 


our  modern  capitalist,  individualistic  society 
was  headed  straight  for  Niagara  and  already  in 
the  rapids.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
Carlyle  predicted  the  disaster  which  has  lately 
befallen  the  nations;  his  passion  came  from  his 
understanding  of  the  peril ;  our  Aristotle,  on  the 
other  hand,  had  no  "premises"  to  argue  from 
and  so  came  to  no  such  pregnant  conclusion. 

Yet  this  "Autobiography"  has  a  pathetic  in- 
terest for  me.  In  it  Spencer  tells  how  he  broke 
down  at  thirty-five  from  overwork  and  never 
afterwards  regained  complete  health. 

At  the  time  of  our  meeting  he  was  only  able 
to  dictate  for  ten  minutes  at  a  time,  and  the 
slightest  overwork,  bodily  or  mental,  or  even 
undue  attention,  would  render  sleep  impossible, 
and  so  he  came  to  use  ear-stoppers,  which  saved 
him  from  hearing  or  feeling  too  much. 

And  once  the  periodicity  of  sleep  broken,  his 
wretched  nerves  would  grow  worse  and  worse, 
so  that  he  had  to  lay  all  work  aside  at  once,  seek 
sleep  and  ensue  it.  Mr.  Carnegie  gave  him  a 
piano;  like  Saul  he  engaged  a  David  (a  girl 
pianist)  to  play  for  him,  but  the  pleasure  was  too 
great;  he  had  to  deny  himself  the  enjoyment. 
For  forty  or  fifty  years  his  life  was  one  long 
struggle  with  "nerves"  and  sleeplessness. 

But  even  here  he  is  too  much  of  a  philosopher 
to  excite  our  pity.  The  artist  nature  aflflicted  in 
this  way  would  have  surely  done  something  to 

239 


excess;  would  have  spent  days  in  writing  or 
nights  in  passionate  living,  and  the  "nerves"  and 
sleeplessness  would  have  led  to  that  thin  line 
that  divides  sanity  from  insanity. 

And  before  that  spectre  the  bravest  quails. 
Shakespeare's  anguished  cry  constricts  the  heart: 

"Make  me  not  mad,  kind  Heaven,  not  mad." 

That  is  the  torture-chamber  of  our  modern  life, 
which  Shakespeare  and  Dostoievsky  alone  of 
men  so  far,  have  dared  to  enter  or  been  able  to 
describe.  Maupassant  went  in,  it  is  true,  but 
never  came  out  again  to  live  as  a  man  among 
men ;  we  heard  his  first  screams  and  the  squeal- 
ing idiot  laughter,  and  later  his  horrible,  jibber- 
ing  mutism,  and  then  mercifully  the  curtain  fell. 
But  Spencer  had  not  to  pay  any  such  price. 
As  soon  as  he  got  "quirks"  and  "the  strange  feel- 
ing in  his  head,"  he  dropped  everything  and 
went  after  health.  He  was  a  philosopher.  True, 
he  didn't  get  health,  and  so  his  experience  is  not 
much  good  to  us,  either  as  warning-signal  or  as 
guide-post.  He  never  even  learned  that  change, 
continual  change  of  scene,  of  food,  of  compan- 
ionship, is  the  golden  way  to  lead  the  neuras- 
thenic back  to  health ;  especially,  for  the  artist  or 
writer,  change  to  an  open-air  life;  a  riding  tour 
or  a  motor-car  trip  across  a  continent;  some 
change  that  bathes  one  all  day  long  in  sunshine 
and  affords  one  ever-varying  incidents  and  light, 
passing  pleasures  affords  an  almost  certain  cure. 

240 


But  still  Spencer's  breakdown  and  subsequent 
ill-health  made  him  a  pathetic  figure  to  me; 
filled  me  indeed  with  regret,  if  not  remorse,  that 
I  had  been  so  discourteous  as  to  annoy  him  with 
my  rude  health  and  ruder  difference  of  opinion. 

A  few  years  later  I,  too,  learned  what 
"nerves"  were  and  knew  that  a  debate  rudely 
pushed  on  one  might  have  appalling  conse- 
quences. Our  excuse  is:  we  know  not  what  we 
do. 

More  than  anything  we  men  need  constant 
consideration  for  others,  the  most  tremulous 
womanly  sensitiveness,  and  we  are  all  too  apt 
to  show  hard  indifference  or  that  unthinking 
selfishness  which  is  the  brazen  shield  and  front 
of  all  human  wrong-doing. 

But  now,  before  I  leave  this  "Autobiography," 
let  me  say  that  there  are  good  things  in  it;  food 
for  the  mind,  if  not  for  the  soul. 
,  Spencer's  ideas  on  education,  his  conviction 
that  an  elementary  knowledge  even  of  our  own 
bodies  and  minds,  of  physiology  and  psychology, 
would  be  a  thousand  times  more  valuable  than 
a  smattering  of  Latin  and  Greek;  his  insistence 
on  teaching  the  true  conduct  of  life,  on  having 
the  pitfalls  and  dangers  of  living  explained  even 
to  children,  were  all  very  valuable  and  far  ahead 
of  ordinary  opinion  even  in  our  time. 

He  knew  something  about  learning  how  to 
think.    For  instance,  he  notices  the  fact  that  in 

241 


2L  hilly  country  the  roads  are  far  below  the  level 
of  the  surrounding  land,  whereas  on  a  plain  the 
roads  are  on  much  the  same  level  as  the  adjacent 
fields.  To  explain  this  properly  is  the  sort  of 
problem,  he  says,  which  should  be  given  to  young 
people  to  solve;  it  would  help  to  teach  them 
how  to  think,  and  he  is  right.  Such  a  problem, 
solved  without  help,  is  often  the  beginning  of 
original  thought. 

On  the  other  hand,  his  limitations  are  aston- 
ishing. He  cannot  see  himself  from  the  outside 
and  he  is  continually  deducing  inferences  from 
his  own  experiences  which  are  ridiculously  ab- 
surd. He  finds  that  the  drawbacks  of  philo- 
sophic study,  or  indeed  of  any  serious  literary 
life,  are  greater  than  the  advantages.  First  of 
all,  he  says,  unless  "a  man's  means  are  such  as 
enable  him  not  only  to  live  for  a  long  time  with- 
out returns,  but  to  bear  the  losses  which  his 
books  entail  on  him,  he  will  soon  be  brought 
to  a  stand  and  subjected  to  heavy  penalties."  He 
adds,  naively:  "My  own  history  well  exempli- 
fies this  probability,  or  rather  certainty."  And 
he  sums  up :  "Evidently  it  was  almost  a  miracle 
that  I  did  not  sink  before  success  was  reached." 
He  is  always  a  pessimist;  it  is  only  fair  to  say 
that  for  a  man  of  talent  the  literary  life  in  spite 
of  the  precarious  reward,  which  is  its  chief 
drawback,  is  the  best  and  largest  life  offered  to 
men  in  our  age.    It  has  one  paramount  advantage 

242 


that  dwarfs  all  drawbacks.  It  confers  a  sort  of 
universal  introduction  and  enables  one  without 
wealth  or  birth  to  meet  on  an  equal  footing  all 
the  most  distinguished  men  of  the  time. 

Even  Schopenhauer,  the  so-called  pessimist, 
knew  that  "a  poet  or  philosopher  should  have  no 
fault  to  find  with  his  age  if  it  only  permits  him 
to  do  his  work."  And  no  age  can  prevent  him. 
Were  this  the  place,  it  would  be  easy  to  show 
that  every  age  is  propitious  to  genius  and  high 
endeavor;  like  calls  to  like;  great  men  in  every 
department  of  life  recognize  each  other  and  hold 
it  a  duty  to  help  the  man  who  reminds  them  of 
the  dreams  of  their  youth.  That  Spencer  never 
felt  the  thrill  of  recognition  and  comradeship 
simply  proves  that  he  was  not  of  the  lineage  of 
the  great,  is  not  to  be  reckoned  with  Schopen- 
hauer and  Bacon. 

Yet,  within  his  limits,  he  tried  to  be  fair- 
minded  and  did  excellent  work.    He  writes: 

"Even  at  the  present  moment,  the  absolute 
opposition  between  the  doctrine  of  forgiveness 
preached  by  a  hundred  thousand  European 
priests,  and  the  actions  of  European  soldiers  and 
colonists  who  out-do  the  law  of  blood-revenge 
among  savages,  and  massacre  a  village  in  retalia- 
tion for  a  single  death,  shows  that  two  thousand 
years  of  Christian  culture  has  changed  the  prim- 
itive barbarian  very  little.  And  yet  one  cannot 
but  conclude  that  it  has  had  some  effect,  and  may 

243 


infer  that  in  its  absence  things  would  have  been 
worse.   ... 

"Thus  I  have  come  more  and  more  to  look 
calmly  on  forms  of  religious  belief  to  which  I 
had,  in  earlier  days,  a  pronounced  aversion." 

At  long  last  he  writes:  "I  have  come  to  re- 
gard religious  creeds  with  a  sympathy  based  on 
community  of  need;  feeling  that  dissent  from 
them  results  from  inability  to  accept  the  solu- 
tions offered,  joined  with  the  wish  that  solutions 
could  be  found."  He  was  always  just  on  Ten- 
nyson's level: 

"Behold,  we  know  not  anything, 
We  can  but  trust  that  Good  may  fall, 
At  last,  far  off,  at  last — to  all. 
And  every  Winter  change  to  Spring." 


244 


^^•. 


The  Right  Hon.  Arthur  J.  Balfour 


THE  RIGHT  HON.  ARTHUR  BALFOUR: 
AMERICA'S  NEWEST  GUEST 

/  leave  this  pen-portrait  as  it  ivas  written  in 
March  1917,  for  it  derives  a  certain  peculiar  in- 
terest from  the  circumstances  of  the  time. 

Frank  Harris. 

HO    would    have    predicted    fifteen 
years  ago  that  America  would  fight 
Germany  on  behalf  of  the  very  men 
who   made   war   on   the   Boer   Re- 
publics?    Yet   here   we   have   Mr. 
Arthur  Balfour  on  his  way  to  Washington  to 
confer  with  our  President  how  best  to  organize 
victory. 

Mr.  Balfour  has  not  changed  in  the  mean- 
while. He  stands  now  precisely  where  he  stood 
then;  he  is  the  same  convinced,  contemptuous, 
courteous  antagonist  of  human  equality  that  he 
was  when  he  sneered  at  the  Boer  farmers  and  the 
"dead  level  of  ignorant  herdsmen." 

In  order  to  avoid  any  suspicion  of  prejudice 
let  me  prove  this  before  going  further,  for  I 
have  an  artist's  liking  for  a  man  who  is  true  to 
type,  and  in  this  case  the  type  is  a  fine  one. 

Wishing  to  write  on  the  Russian  Revolution 
recently  my  knowledge,  especially  of  the  young- 
er Russian  leaders,  had  to  be  refurbished  and 

245 


brought  up  to  date ;  accordingly  I  applied  to  all 
the  Russian  leaders  and  thinkers  I  could  get  in 
touch  with  in  New  York  City.  One  of  the  ablest 
I  met  was  Leo  Trotsky,  a  Russian  Jew  and  revo- 
lutionary, a  man  who  had  spent  and  been  spent 
in  the  cause  of  social  justice.  Trotsky's  person- 
ality seemed  to  me  charming;  a  man  slightly 
below  middle  height,  broad,  strong,  vitally  alert; 
a  mop  of  thick,  bristling,  rebellious  black  hair, 
regular  features,  broad  forehead,  the  whole  face 
lit  up  by  a  pair  of  glowing  bright  dark  eyes — 
the  eyes  of  an  enthusiast  or  captain.  Trotsky 
talked  to  me  for  hours,  sharpening,  clarifying 
my  view  of  this  man  and  that,  putting  Prince 
Lyov  in  his  true  place  as  a  kindly,  honest  medi- 
ocrity with  the  same  ease  and  certainty  that  he 
classed  the  enthusiastic  young  lawyer,  Kerensky, 
or  the  Socialist,  Tscheidze. 

His  precision  of  knowledge  was  matched  by 
his  width  of  vision.  He  saw  clearly  that  as  the 
revolution  went  on,  the  Moderates  would  be 
eliminated;  that  the  extreme  social  revolution- 
aries would  surely  come  more  and  more  to 
power,  for  they  would  be  reinforced  by  others 
freed  from  the  prisons  of  absolutism  in  South 
Russia  and  Siberia.  He  spoke  of  the  new  Rus- 
sia as  one  would  speak  of  a  beloved  woman  who 
had  been  defiled  and  tortured,  and  now  having 
conquered  her  persecutors  was  intent  on  paying 
her  debt  to  humanity  by  ideal  devotions. 

246 


*'Holy  Russia  as  leader  of  the  free  peoples, 
Russia  as  the  one  country  that  could  make  the 
United  States  of  Europe  a  possibility," — was  the 
vision  splendid  that  enthralled  him. 

"You  are  going  back?"  I  asked. 

"Surely,"  he  cried,  "at  once;  a  dozen  of  us." 

"Are  you  sure  of  getting  to  Petrograd?"  I 
asked. 

"Sure,"  he  replied.    "Who'd  stop  us?" 

"England  might  stop  you,"  I  ventured. 

"England  1"  he  exclaimed.  "England  is  with 
the  Allies.  England  is  Russia's  friend.  Why 
should  England  stop  us?" 

"England  is  the  friend  of  the  Czar,"  I  replied. 
"England,  you  know,  gave  all  Milyukov's  secrets 
six  months  ago  to  the  Czar's  Government." 

"That's  all  past,"  he  cried.  "England  could 
not  stop  us  now  if  she  would  and  would  not  if 
she  could;  you  forget,  we  shall  be  on  a  neutral 
ship,  really  under  the  Stars  and  Stripes  coming 
from  an  American  port;  as  safe  as  in  our  beds 
here." 

"Perhaps  so,"  I  answered.  "I  hope  you  are 
right,  but  the  English  oligarchy  is  in  power: 
Balfour  and  his  lieutenants,  Lords  Curzon  and 
Milner;  they  are  not  in  sympathy  with  revolu- 
tionaries who  dream  of  social  equality.  They 
know  their  real  enemies,  believe  me!" 

247 


Trotsky  would  not  even  listen ;  an  optimist  by 
nature,  he  was  now  winged  with  hope. 

A  week  later  the  news  came;  Leo  Trotsky  and 
nine  of  his  fellows  had  been  seized  on  board  a 
neutral  ship  in  Halifax.  In  spite  of  their  pro- 
tests they  were  thrown  into  prison  and  shortly 
afterwards  transferred  to  a  camp  for  interned 
German  enemies  at  Amherst  in  Canada. 

His  friends  protested  to  our  President,  but 
without  success.  Meanwhile  the  punishment  of 
these  innocent  enthusiasts  is  continued.  A  word 
from  President  Wilson  would  probably  free 
them;  but  he  remains  silent,  though,  of  course, 
not  indifferent.  Similar  high-handed  action  on 
the  part  of  Great  Britain  brought  about  the  War 
of  1812,  and  what  we  fought  then  to  prevent,  we 
can  hardly  accept  to-day  with  complacence.  The 
imprisonment  of  Trotsky  and  his  friends  is  Ar- 
thur Balfour's  reply  to  President  Wilson's  warm- 
hearted welcome  to  the  Russian  revolutionaries 
and  his  wide-flung  assurance  that  America  is 
entering  this  war  to  fight  for  human  freedom  and 
for  democracy  against  the  injustices  of  autocratic 
tyranny. 

I  see  Arthur  Balfour  entering  the  White 
House,  smiling  and  shaking  hands  with  Presi- 
dent Wilson,  but  his  right  foot  is  planted  on  Leo 
Trotsky's  face. 

And  Leo  Trotsky,  the  outcast  Jew  and  revolu- 
248 


tionary,  is  far  more  valuable  to  humanity  than 
Arthur  Balfour,  who  took  him  from  a  neutral 
ship  in  defiance  of  law  and  right  and  now  holds 
him  in  prison. 

Who  is  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour?  His  outward, 
as  Hamlet  would  say,  is  that  of  a  scholar  and 
courtier,  captivatingly  sympathetic.  He  is  over 
six  feet  in  height,  slight,  stooping,  with  a  large 
head  and  a  prodigiously  high  forehead  framed 
now  with  silver  hair;  the  complexion  is  as  fresh 
as  that  of  a  boy;  the  eyes  are  blue,  patient,  with- 
out being  searching,  amiably  mirroring  pleas- 
ant surroundings.  He  has  perfect  manners  till 
he  is  crossed.  He  was  called  Miss  Arabella  at 
Eton  till  people  found  out  that  he  was  as  auto- 
cratic and  hard  as  Nero.  A  few  incidents  of  his 
career  will  paint  this  typical  aristocrat  to  the  life. 

I  do  not  need  to  tell  of  his  youthful  vagaries : 
how  he  became  known  as  a  lieutenant  of  Lord 
Randolph  Churchill  and  the  supporter  of  "The 
Souls,"  and  how  he  sat  at  the  feet  of  Lady  Elcho. 
It  is  enough  to  say  here  that  "The  Souls"  was  a 
select  coterie  of  the  smartest  set  in  London  in  the 
eighties,  with  Lady  Brownlow  and  George  Cur- 
zon  and  Margot  Tennant  (now  Mrs.  Asquith) 
as  the  most  fervent  adherents. 

The  first  time  the  outside  public  got  any  ink- 
ling of  Balfour's  quality  was  when  he  became 
Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland.    For  a  little  while 

249 


the  Irish  hoped  great  things  of  him.  He  was 
so  courteous,  so  well-read,  listened  with  such 
sympathetic  attention  that  they  thought  he  was 
an  "easy  mark,"  as  American  slang  has  it,  but 
they  soon  found  out  that,  while  listening  to  all 
they  had  to  say,  he  promised  nothing  and  would 
not  yield  an  iota.  They  attacked  him  then  in 
the  House  and  insulted  him  to  his  face.  He 
listened  to  their  abuse  as  he  had  listened  to  their 
praise  with  the  same  smiling,  gentle  courtesy, 
and  went  on  backing  up  the  oligarchy,  ruthlessly 
evicting  tenants,  and  ruining  whole  countrysides 
to  the  very  verge  of  rebellion. 

One  word  of  his  about  the  Irish  members  de- 
serves to  be  recorded.  Speaking  of  the  way  they 
had  treated  Chief  Secretary  Foster — "Buckshot" 
Foster — he  said: 

"So  long  as  he  was  in  power  they  were  black- 
ening his  character;  now  that  he  attacks  the  Gov- 
ernment, they  are  blackening  his  boots." 

The  whole  quarrel  was  typified  in  the  agita- 
tion about  "O'Brien's  Breeches."  O'Brien,  who 
had  met  Mr.  Balfour  frequently  at  social  func- 
tions, and  rather  liked  him,  protested  against 
being  put  in  the  hideous  uniform  of  the  ordinary 
criminal.  He  was  a  political  prisoner,  he  said, 
and  would  not  wear  the  badge  of  shame.  He 
took  off  the  suit  and  shivered  naked  in  his  cell. 
The  next  day  they  clothed  him  forcibly  and  told 

250 


him  that  if  he  took  off  the  prison  uniform  again 
he  would  be  punished  as  any  other  rebellious 
prisoner  was  punished;  and  finally  O'Brien  gave 
in  with  a  bad  cold  in  his  head,  and  Mr.  Bal- 
four's victory  was  hailed  with  jeers  of  contempt 
for  the  Irish. 

But  if  you  think  of  it,  what  a  paltry  victory  it 
was?  One  asked  oneself:  Does  Mr.  Balfour 
really  think  he  is  living  in  Russia  that  he  can 
treat  political  prisoners  as  common  criminals? 
I  heard  him  once  remark  that  he  could  see  no 
difference  between  political  prisoners  and  burg- 
lars and  murderers  except  that  the  political  pris- 
oners were  of  a  class  to  know  better  and  so  their 
guilt  was  deeper. 

People  found  out  that  "Miss  Arabella"  as 
Irish  Secretary  was  a  fighter  to  the  last  ditch. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  South  African  war  it 
will  be  remembered  that  the  Boers  won  victory 
after  victory.  Their  riflemen  outshot  the  British 
soldiers  much  as  the  American  riflemen  outshot 
Wellington's  veterans  at  New  Orleans.  Buller 
was  beaten  to  a  standstill  in  Natal.  The  whole 
of  Cape  Colony  was  in  a  ferment.  After  Mag- 
ersfontein  and  the  whipping  of  Lord  Methuen, 
it  looked  as  if  the  British  might  lose  South  Af- 
rica. At  the  Cabinet  meetings  Mr.  Chamberlain 
showed  himself  shaken  to  the  soul.  He  kept 
repeating  continually  that  he  had  been  deceived 

251 


by  the  War  Office;  that  the  generals  had  assured 
him  that  the  war  would  be  finished  in  three 
months;  that  it  would  be  a  "walkover." 

But  Mr.  Balfour  came  to  the  Cabinet  meet- 
ings smiling  and  disinterested  as  ever  and  usual- 
ly half  an  hour  late.  When  his  colleagues  doubt- 
ed he  was  surprised  ;when  they  looked  at  one  an- 
other in  consternation  he  shrugged  his  shoulders. 
In  the  darkest  days  he  was  just  as  amusedly  de- 
tached as  he  was  in  the  beginning  of  this  war. 

He  defended  the  burning  to  the  ground  of  the 
farmhouses  of  non-combatant  Boers;  he  ap- 
proved the  herding  of  the  Boer  women  and  chil- 
dren into  the  deadly  Concentration  Camps  in 
the  Transvaal  where  milk  was  not  to  be  had. 
When  he  was  taunted  by  an  Irishman  with  "the 
Slaughter  of  the  Innocents,"  he  retorted  that  the 
gentleman  was  no  doubt  justified  in  defending 
his  own  kind — a  gibe  too  bitter  to  be  appre- 
ciated by  the  House,  though  every  one  knew 
that  "innocent"  is  often  used  in  Ireland  chari- 
tably for  "idiot."  Many  members  were  shocked 
to  find  that  urbane,  smiling,  gentle  leader  cared 
little  for  human  life  or  the  conventions  of  civil- 
ized warfare:  "No  omelet  without  breaking 
eggs"  is  his  motto. 

Courage  Arthur  Balfour  has  of  a  high  quality 
— all  but  the  highest,  indeed — for  invincible 
courage  is  the  martyr's,  and  is  grounded  in  clear 

252 


insight  into  the  Right  and  uncompromising  as- 
sertion of  it. 

His  cool  selfishness  was  not  without  ambition. 
As  soon  as  he  was  strong  enough  he  favored  an 
intrigue  which  forced  Lord  Salisbury  to  resign 
the  post  of  Prime  Minister,  and  the  nephew 
reigned  in  the  uncle's  stead.  Arthur  Balfour 
thought  this  a  natural,  indeed  an  inevitable,  con- 
clusion, but  Hugh  Cecil,  the  ablest  of  Lord  Sal- 
isbury's sons,  has  never  forgiven  the  "cuckoo" 
feat. 

Arthur  Balfour  showed  himself  at  his  very 
strongest  in  dealing  with  Mr.  Chamberlain  after 
the  Boer  War.  Mr.  Chamberlain  had  been  a 
confirmed  Free  Trader  for  thirty  years.  In  the 
war  against  the  Boers  he  found  out  what  the 
colonists  were  worth  and  he  began  to  dream  of 
a  great  Confederation  of  British  States.  He  saw 
at  once  that  this  necessitated  protection  of  the 
products  of  the  Empire  and  free  exchange  within 
the  Empire.  He  therefore  put  this  forward  in 
a  speech  without  any  reference  to  Mr.  Balfour 
— a  plain  challenge  for  the  leadership.  A  fort- 
night later  Mr.  Balfour  answered  him.  Every 
one  expected  that  he  would  attack  Mr.  Cham- 
berlain, or  at  any  rate  repudiate  his  policy,  but 
he  merely  said  that  it  was  a  very  interesting  de- 
parture, indeed ;  as  a  Conservative  he  could  not 
but  see  a  good  deal  in  it  and  he  was  delighted 

253 


that  the  Colonial  Secretary  should  at  length  have 
taken  cognizance  of  those  forces  which  bind  men 
together  in  society.  An  anecdote  at  this  time 
will  show  the  man. 

He  lives  at  Whittinghame,  his  country  house 
in  Scotland,  with  a  sister,  a  very  advanced 
thinker — Susan  or  Sarah  Balfour,  I  forget 
which:  we  will  call  her  Miss  Susan. 

One  night  she  was  expected  from  London  and 
was  rather  late.  Arthur  Balfour  waited  dinner 
for  her.  When  she  came  into  the  dining-room 
she  was  evidently  very  excited. 

"What  is  the  matter,  Susan?"  said  Arthur. 
"You  seem  excited." 

"For  the  first  time  in  my  life,"  said  Miss 
Susan,  "I  have  been  treated  rudely  by  a  work- 
ingman." 

"Really!"  he  remarked;  "have  you  ever  been 
treated  rudely  by  gentlemen?" 

"By  well-dressed  wasters,  often,"  retorted  the 
lady,  "and  now  by  a  workingman." 

"How  was  that?" 

"I  got  into  a  third-class  carriage  as  usual," 
said  Miss  Susan,  "and  there  was  a  workingman 
in  it  who  spat  on  the  floor.  When  I  reproved 
him  and  told  him  he  ought  to  be  ashamed  of 
himself  and  go  in  a  cattle-truck  if  he  wanted  to 
be  dirty,  he  answered  that  I  ought  to  be  ashamed 
of  myself;  I  ought  to  go  in  a  first-class  carriage, 
where  I  belonged,  and  leave  workingmen  who 

254 


had  done  a  day's  work  to  take  their  rest  quietly 
in  the  train  without  being  bothered  by  super- 
fine manners. 

"I  told  him  his  spitting  was  disgusting,  more 
like  a  pig  than  a  man ;  I  said  if  he  did  it  again 
I  would  give  him  in  charge.  Don't  you  think  I 
was  right?" 

"I  don't  really  know,"  said  Arthur  Balfour. 
"The  *pig'  and  'cattle-truck'  epithets  were  no 
doubt  effective,  but  rather  in  the  manner  of  the 
Colonial  Secretary,  don't  you  think?  .... 

As  Prime  Minister  and  Leader  of  the  House 
of  Commons  Arthur  Balfour  was  a  failure; 
came,  indeed,  to  complete  grief,  and  this  in  spite 
of  English  snobbery  and  his  own  high  qualities. 
He  grew  to  be  too  autocratic  and  asserted  a  more 
than  Popish  infallibility.  He  fell  of  his  own 
strength.  Not  only  was  he  an  aristocrat  by  birth 
and  natural  leader  of  the  oligarchy,  but  he  was 
a  man  of  the  widest  reading  and  culture — a 
Scotch  metaphysician  who  had  taught  himself 
to  think  out  the  non-utilitarian  problems  of 
Why?  Whence?  and  Whither?  to  the  verge  of 
the  Unknown.  On  a  ceremonial  occasion  he 
could  make  a  speech  in  the  House  which  put 
Mr.  Asquith's  best  work  in  a  secondary  place. 
He  alone  could  rise  to  the  height  of  every  argu- 
ment, and  yet  as  a  leader  of  the  House  he  failed, 
even  in  England,  and  not  of  weakness  but  of 
autocratic  egotjsm. 

255 


He  announced  that  any  one  who  ventured  to 
criticize  him  or  dissent  from  his  policy  had 
better  leave  the  party,  for  he  assuredly  would 
not  help  him  to  office.  He  would  have  no  lieu- 
tenant that  was  not  a  servant  and  servile. 

Winston  Churchill  was  the  first  to  take  up  the 
glove.  He  criticized  Balfour  in  the  House  and 
defied  him;  then  left  the  party  and  became  a 
leader  of  the  Liberals.  I  well  remember  the 
night  in  the  House  when  he  made  his  great 
speech  and  how  Arthur  Balfour  got  up  in  the 
middle  of  it  and  walked  out  as  if  he  was  uncon- 
cerned. Many  members  resented  the  contempt- 
uous act.  Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  his  own  first  cousin, 
the  ablest  Conservative  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons— the  only  one  in  my  time  of  undoubted 
genius — was  snubbed  by  Balfour  and  kept  out 
of  sight.  When  he  lost  his  seat  in  the  House, 
though  it  was  the  custom  and  would  have  been 
a  mere  courtesy  to  have  got  him  another,  Balfour 
left  him  out  in  the  cold.  His  conduct  of  affairs 
was  so  autocratic  that  at  length  even  the  landed 
squirearchy  and  the  rich  manufacturers  deserted 
Lord  Salisbury's  nephew  for  the  unregarded 
colonist,  Bonar  Law,  and  Bonar  Law  was  made 
master  in  his  stead. 

Mr.  Balfour  seemed  to  care  as  little  for  the 
defeat  as  for  success.  He  did  not  attack  the 
Government  which  had  taken  his  place;  he  pur- 
sued the  even  tenor  of  his  way,  unperturbed.    He 

256 


wrote  a  "Defense  of  Philosophic  Doubt"  and 
made  stately  speeches  in  the  House  at  long  in- 
tervals.   Like  Shakespeare's  Caesar, 

"He  let  determined  things  to  Destiny, 
Hold  unbewailed  their  way." 

It  is  possible  that  if  Arthur  Balfour  had  had 
to  work  for  a  living  he  might  have  risen  to  orig- 
inal thought.  His  "Foundations  of  Belief"  is 
really  interesting;  it  is  Bergson  adapted  rather 
than  translated  into  English  by  one  who  had 
already  coquetted  in  thought  with  the  idea  of 
creative  evolution.  Arthur  Balfour  is,  as  Heine 
says,  on  the  topmost  level  of  the  thought  of  his 
time.  He  has  reached  the  conviction  that  his 
political  creed  is  sustained  and  buttressed  by  the 
faith  and  practice  of  a  thousand  generations  of 
men. 

"Who  survive  in  men's  memories?"  he  will 
ask — "the  statesmen  and  generals,  the  writers  and 
artists,  the  greatest  of  the  sons  of  men.  Those 
are  the  people  whom  I  consider  and  whom  I  like. 
The  unnumbered  millions  who  never  attain  any- 
thing I  can  afford  to  forget, — as  their  fellow- 
men  forget  them  and  as  probably  God  forgets 
them  also.  I  have  no  interest  in  the  unwashed 
herd." 

He  forgets  that  the  only  distinguished  people 
he  takes  any  heed  of  arc  those  in  his  own  class 
and  set;  had  he  rubbed  shoulders  more  with  the 
crowd  he  would  have  been  a  bigger  man. 

257 


He  was  once  asked  in  the  House  of  Commons 
about  something  that  was  in  all  the  daily  papers. 
He  professed  complete  ignorance  on  the  subject. 

"But  it  has  been  in  all  the  daily  papers,"  his 
questioner  remarked. 

"Very  possibly,"  replied  Mr.  Balfour.  "I 
never  read  the  daily  papers." 

Members  of  the  House  looked  at  each  other 
and  smiled,  but  it  was  not  a  pose;  it  was  the 
truth. 

Arthur  Balfour  is  always  perfectly  self-pos- 
sessed, completely  at  ease.  I  remember  seeing 
him  one  night  in  a  crowd  going  up  the  broad 
staircase  of  Sutherland  House.  He  bowed  as  he 
came  up  to  this  and  that  person  standing  in  the 
gallery  above  him  with  the  charming  good  na- 
ture of  a  pleased  schoolboy.  He  did  not  see  that 
he  was  keeping  just  in  front  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales  and  spoiling  the  Prince's  entrance.  When 
he  got  to  the  top  of  the  stairs  his  hostess  greeted 
him,  adding  quickly:  "Pardon  me,  Mr.  Bal- 
four, but  the  Prince  is  just  behind  you." 

Balfour  turned  round,  bowed  to  the  Prince 
and  said  smiling  happily: 

"Ohl  Sir,  it  simply  shows  that  there  is  no  divi- 
nation in  this  clay  of  mine  or  I  should  have  felt 
a  prickling  in  my  back  and  given  you  the  pride 
of  place," 

25§ 


It  was  perfectly  said  with  a  charming  smile  as 
of  equal  to  equal,  but  with  subtle  recognition  of 
the  other's  superior  rank. 

How  will  Mr.  Balfour  meet  President  Wil- 
son? He  is  some  ten  years  older,  ten  well-filled 
years.  I  am  afraid  he  will  be  his  superior  in 
many  qualities;  a  better  dialectician,  a  greater 
master  of  English ;  one  who  has  practised  speak- 
ing for  over  forty  years  and  has  held  his  own  in 
debate  again  and  again  in  Throne  room  and 
Senate  against  all  comers;  he  won  his  spurs  in 
the  Berlin  Conference  in  1878. 

A  Lincoln  would  see  through  him  and  round 
him  by  virtue  of  a  larger  humanity  and  a  passion- 
ate resolve  to  serve  his  fellow-men ;  a  Roosevelt 
even  would  sense  his  deficiencies;  though  he 
might  not  be  able  to  analyze  them,  but  Mr. 
Wilson  is  of  his  own  sort,  a  scholar  and  amateur 
of  life  with  the  deficiencies  of  the  bookish.  Yet 
Mr.  Wilson  has  one  eminent  superiority;  he  is 
an  American  and  should  be  gifted  with  a  deeper 
moral  conscience;  he  could  hardly  have  coerced 
Ireland  or  enslaved  Egypt;  he,  too,  must  feel 
that  Mr.  Balfour  is  essentially  hollow  and  that 
gives  me  hope.  I  see  Mr.  Balfour  bowing  to  Mr. 
Wilson,  smiling  because  he  thinks  he  has  capti- 
vated him  with  his  charm  and  courtesy;  but  he 
has  still  his  foot  on  the  face  of  Leo  Trotsky. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  our  President  with  his 
259 


own  suavest  courtesy  will  point  out  this  fact  to 
Mr.  Balfour  and  invite  him  in  the  interests  of 
humanity  to  take  more  care  for  the  future  where 
he  puts  his  foot. 


260 


The  Right  Hon.  David  Lloyd  George 


MR.  LLOYD  GEORGE  AND  THE 
FUTURE 
NLIKE  most  of  his  rivals  in  British 
politics,    Mr.    Lloyd   George   came 
from  the  people;  he  has  a  touch  of 
genius  in  him  too,  and  is  a  Welsh- 
man to  boot.     Even  without  genius 
the  Welsh  Celt  is  often  interesting;  he  is  gen- 
erally articulate  and  he's  nearly  always  apt  to 
reason  with  his  emotions  and  calculate  with  his 
passions  to  the  bewilderment  of  the  Saxon.     It 
ought  to  be  easy  for  me  as  a  Welsh  Celt  to  give  a 
vivid    and    interesting    word-portrait    of    Mr. 
Lloyd  George  and  yet  it's  peculiarly  difficult.   I 
find  it  hard  to  treat  him  sympathetically  be- 
cause, although  our  aims  in  politics  have  often 
been  alike,  the  means  we  would  employ  to  com- 
pass them,  are  wholly  dissimilar.    The  bitterest 
disagreements,  it  appears,  are  always  between 
brethren. 

From  the  crown  of  his  head  to  the  sole  of  his 
feet  David  Lloyd  George  is  a  typical  Welsh 
Celt;  he  is  short,  broad,  thick-set,  with  the  heavy 
body  and  ungraceful  short  legs  of  the  Cymri. 
His  face  is  more  regular  than  most  Celtic  faces 
and  is  nevertheless  exceedingly  mobile  and  vivid 

261 


— expressive  of  every  shade  of  feeling  or  resolu- 
tion. His  voice,  too,  like  many  Welsh  voices,  is 
very  strong,  resonant  and  musical,  and  when 
master  of  his  feelings,  as  he  occasionally  is,  he 
is  perhaps  the  greatest  orator  in  Great  Britain, 
or  it  w^ould  be  truer  to  say  the  only  orator  of 
the  first  rank,  with  the  exception  of  Lord  Hugh 
Cecil  or  Ramsay  MacDonald. 

David  Lloyd  George  has  come  from  the  lower 
half  of  the  social  ladder:  he  is  the  son  of  a 
teacher  in  a  Unitarian  school  at  Liverpool  and 
accordingly  from  boyhood  his  deepest  feelings 
have  been  at  the  service  of  politics  rather  than 
of  religion.  His  father  died  when  he  was  an 
infant;  but  the  apparent  misfortune  was  a  bless- 
ing in  disguise.  He  was  taken  to  Wales  to  live 
with  an  uncle,  David  Lloyd,  a  shoemaker,  and 
there  the  enthusiastic  and  gifted  lad  sucked  in  a 
complete  command  of  Welsh  as  a  mother- 
tongue.  He  had  the  usual  Church-School  train- 
ing and  learned  English  as  a  schoolboy;  as  a 
youth,  he  was  placed  in  a  solicitor's  office,  and 
was  admitted  to  the  practice  of  law  in  1884, 
when  just  twenty-one. 

He  has  told  himself  how  he  visited  the  House 
of  Commons  at  eighteen  and  looked  upon  it  as 
William  the  Conqueror  looked  upon  England 
during  his  visit  to  Edward  the  Confessor,  as  his 
future  "domain."  At  twenty  he  wrote  in  his 
diary  that  his  career  in  the  House  depended  on 

262 


his  own  "pluck  and  energy."  He  had  hardly 
reached  a  decent  living  as  a  solicitor  when  he 
stood  for  Parliament  and,  thanks  chiefly  to  his 
eloquence  in  Welsh,  was  elected  for  Carnarvon 
in  1890.  When  only  twenty-seven  years  of  age 
he  had  thus  got  his  foot  on  the  first  rung  of  the 
political  ladder.  In  the  next  ten  years  he  won 
a  fair  practice  as  a  solicitor,  made  himself  con- 
versant with  the  forms  and  spirit  of  the  House 
of  Commons  and  gradually  became  known  to  the 
better  heads,  as  a  personality,  if  not  yet  as  a 
power. 

For  a  good  part  of  this  apprentice  period  Tom 
Ellis  was  the  Whip  of  the  Liberal  party:  he 
and  Lloyd  George  had  grown  up  together  and 
Tom  Ellis  was  a  man  of  extraordinary  quality. 
He  had  the  best  manners  I've  ever  seen  in  my 
life,  better  even,  because  gentler,  more  sympa- 
thetic and  more  quickly  responsive  than  Mr. 
Thomas  Bayard's  who,  as  American  Ambassa* 
dor,  became  famous  during  his  short  stay  in 
London  for  charming  human  courtesy  to  all 
men  alike,  whether  of  palace  or  cottage.  In 
Tom  Ellis,  too,  the  manners  were  only  the  out- 
ward visible  signs  of  an  inward  and  spiritual 
grace.  He  had  the  immediate  intuitive  compre- 
hension of  genius  which  genius  alone  gives,  and 
long  before  Lloyd  George  was  known  to  the 
House  Tom  Ellis  had  marked  him  out  for  high 
place:  "a  great  fighting  man,"  he  used  fo  call 

263 


him,  "a  born  orator  and  leader  filled  with  pas- 
sionate emotions;  you'll  see,  he'll  go  far.  At 
any  rate,  he's  much  the  ablest  politician  that  has 
yet  come  out  of  Wales." 

Lloyd  George's  first  parliamentary  exploit 
was  to  revolt  against  the  Liberal  Government 
in  1894  on  the  question  of  disestablishing  the 
Church  in  Wales.  He  led  several  malcontents 
such  as  Francis  Edwards,  Herbert  Lewis  (now 
the  Rt.  Hon.  Sir  Herbert  Lewis)  and  D.  H. 
Thomas  (afterwards  Lord  Rhondda)  on  a  rag- 
ing electoral  campaign  against  Tom  Ellis  and 
his  Welsh  majority  of  40  and  won  notoriety  by 
his  daring  if  nothing  more. 

It  was  the  South  African  War  in  1900  which 
gave  Lloyd  George  his  opportunity:  for  him  it 
came  in  the  nick  of  time.  As  a  Welshman  he  be- 
lieved in  small  nationalities  and  their  claims  to 
fair  treatment  by  their  stronger  neighbors.  All 
his  sympathies  were  with  the  Boers  and  from 
the  beginning  he  championed  their  cause  in  the 
House.  This  brought  him  at  once  into  conflict 
with  the  vast  majority  of  members,  who  are 
always  militant  imperialists  and  particularly 
with  Mr.  Chamberlain,  a  dominant  personality 
and  the  most  redoubtable  debater  at  that  time 
in  the  Commons.  To  the  astonishment  of  the 
House,  the  "little  Welsh  attorney,"  as  he  was 
called,  held  his  own  in  the  cut-and-thrust  of 
debate,  and  the  extreme  Radical  wing  rallied 

264 


with  delight  to  his  support.  In  vain  they  were 
nicknamed  Pro-Boers,  and  shouted  down  in  the 
House  while  their  motives  were  impugned  and 
their  manners  ridiculed  in  the  capitalist  press. 

It  is  almost  as  difficult  in  England  as  in 
America  to  express  any  opinion  which  differs 
from  that  of  the  governing  class,  and  in  time 
of  war  the  difficulty  is  intensified.  For  years, 
even  after  he  had  demonstrated  his  ability, 
Lloyd  George  was  treated  as  a  pariah  in  the 
House;  but  gradually,  events  aiding,  he  came 
more  and  more  to  the  front  till  at  length  a  de- 
cisive victory  established  his  position  as  a  leader 
and  entitled  him  to  consideration. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  Boer  War  the  Intelli- 
gence Department  of  the  Army  under  Lord 
Kitchener  issued  weekly  bulletins  announcing 
the  capture  of,  let  us  say,  1,200  Boers  and  the 
seizing  of  2,000  rifles.  In  May,  Lloyd  George 
asked  the  War  Office  how  many  Boers  were  sup- 
posed to  be  in  the  field.  The  answer  was  be- 
tween 15,000  and  20,000.  In  October  he  brought 
the  matter  before  the  House  and  moved  that 
peace  be  declared,  for  by  a  sum  of  simple  addi- 
tion it  was  evident  that  Lord  Kitchener  having 
captured — according  to  his  own  weekly  reports, 
from  May  to  October,  more  than  30,000  Boers — 
he  was  now  fighting  a  minus  number  of  imag- 
inary enemies  at  the  cost  of  a  couple  of  millions 
sterling  a  week.     The  effect  of  this  ironical 

265 


statement  in  the  House  was  so  extraordinary 
that  the  majority  yelled  with  rage  and  even  Mr. 
Chamberlain  forgot  himself  utterly  and  called 
out  "Cadi"  across  the  floor  to  his  opponent. 
Lloyd  George  won  the  sympathies  even  of  the 
majority  by  meeting  the  insult  with  a  bow: 
"No  one,"  he  said,  smiling,  "could  be  a  better 
judge  of  that  epithet  than  the  Right  Honorable 
gentleman,"  a  double-edged  impromptu  which 
astonished  even  his  friends.  Lloyd  George  was 
clearly  a  first-rate  fighting  man  and  the  House 
cheered  him  warmly  for  the  first  time.  From 
that  day  on  he  had  ministerial  rank. 

When  the  Liberal  party  came  into  power 
Lloyd  George  entered  the  Cabinet  as  President 
of  the  Board  of  Trade.  He  was  regarded  by 
the  Radicals  and  Labor  Members  as  the  only 
democratic  Minister  and  his  first  speeches  con- 
firmed his  reputation.  Throughout  the  country 
he  began  to  be  loved  as  Mr.  Gladstone  had  been 
loved  by  virtue  of  a  certain  religious  sentiment, 
though  his  emotional  appeals  were  usually  taken 
for  claptrap  by  the  House.  Besides,  he  was  dis- 
liked in  the  Commons  as  a  resolute  opponent  of 
the  Imperialistic  spirit,  which  is  always  the 
governing  impulse  in  England.  He  was  con- 
sistent, however;  just  as  he  had  attacked  the 
policy  of  the  strong  out  of  sympathy  with  the 
weak  nationalities,  so  now  when  in  power  he 
showed  constructive  statesmanship  by  support- 

266 


ing  the  cause  of  the  many  poor  in  Great  Britain 
against  the  rich  oligarchy.  Every  speech  was  a 
sort  of  Magna  Charta  to  the  proletariat  and 
marked  a  stage  in  the  rising  flood  of  his  popu- 
larity. To  his  credit  it  must  be  noted  that  he 
still  remained  easy  of  approach,  without  touch 
of  affectation  or  pomposity;  indeed  he  was  usu- 
ally ingratiating  as  well  as  earnest  and  sincere. 

As  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  he  tried  by 
various  measures  to  lay  the  burden  of  taxation 
on  the  rich  and  ease  the  shoulders  of  the  poor. 
His  latest  and  most  successful  measure  was  bor- 
rowed from  Germany — the  Compulsory  Insur- 
ance Act  by  which  employers  are  compelled  to 
contribute  to  the  Accident  and  Insurance  fund 
intended  to  succor  their  employees.  Many 
people  objected  to  this  as  a  vexatious  interfer- 
ence with  private  liberty,  and  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  "the  Stamp-licking  Act,"  as  it  was 
called,  was  heartily  disliked  by  the  richer  classes, 
while  numbers  of  the  poor  were  too  thoughtless 
and  ill-taught  to  appreciate  its  benefits.  Still 
Lloyd  George  was  upheld  by  the  small  body  of 
educated  men  who  knew  that  the  inequality  of 
conditions  in  Great  Britain  had  long  passed  the 
disease  zone  and  reached  the  danger  mark. 
Would  he  go  on  and  lead  the  democracy  into 
the  Promised  Land,  or  would  he  sell  out  to  the 
oligarchy?    That  was  the  question. 

It  is  curious  and  characteristic  that  demo- 
267 


cratic  legislation  in  England,  which  is  supposed 
to  be  a  free  country,  follows  timidly  in  the  foot- 
steps of  autocratic  Germany  and  does  not  dare 
to  imitate  France.  The  land  in  France  is  fair- 
ly parceled  out  among  millions  of  small  pro- 
prietors. There  is  no  approach  to  ideal  justice 
in  the  division,  but  there  is  a  good  deal  of  prac- 
tical justice. 

In  England,  on  the  other  hand,  some  five 
hundred  landlords  own  about  half  the  land  of 
the  country.  The  first  and  most  imperative 
social  reform  would  be  to  give  the  land  back 
to  the  people  from  whom  it  was  in  great  part 
stolen  within  the  last  century  and  a  half;  but 
no  British  statesman  has  yet  dared  to  face  the 
storm  which  such  a  proposal  would  call  forth. 
Eight  or  nine  years  ago  it  looked  as  if  Lloyd 
George  meant  to  take  the  oligarchic  bull  by  the 
horns:  he  set  on  foot  an  inquiry  into  the  posses- 
sion of  land  in  England  and  its  results:  at 
once  he  was  viciously  attacked;  his  agents  and 
methods  derided ;  he  himself  personally  insulted 
by  this  duke  and  that  lord.  Still  he  held  firm. 
His  commission  was  appointed;  two  thousand 
investigators  put  to  work. 

Then  as  a  bolt  from  the  blue  came  the  world- 
war.  Would  it  strengthen  Lloyd  George  and 
his  "communistic  projects"  or  would  it  weaken 
them?  What  happened  could  have  been  fore- 
told.   War  always  strengthens  hierarchies  and 

268 


gifted  individuals.  Lloyd  George  is  to-day 
stronger  than  ever;  but  his  land-legislation  is 
shelved,  and  it  seems  doubtful  even  whether  the 
great  war  minister  will  inaugurate  the  demo- 
cratic reforms  he  has  again  and  again  promised. 
Let  us  take  a  look  at  the  man  in  his  habit  as  he 
lives  before  we  attempt  to  forecast  his  future. 

First  of  all  he  has  some  excellent  virtues.  He 
is  simple  in  his  tastes  and  in  his  surroundings. 
He  likes  good  food  and  is  fond  of  toothsome 
dainties  with  his  tea,  but  he  rarely  touches  wine 
though  he  is  not  a  teetotaller.  Even  on  long  and 
cold  motor  tours  he  always  asks  for  hot  coffee, 
and  he  drinks  it  with  meat  or  game  indifferently 
— a  dreadful  trial  to  most  digestions,  though 
apparently  not  even  noticed  by  his  stomach. 

Mr.  Lloyd  George  has  no  amusements  except 
an  occasional  game  of  golf;  his  chief  self-indul- 
gence is  a  good  cigar.  In  these  later  years  he 
has  grown  somewhat  stout,  partly  because  he 
has  not  been  able  to  find  the  time  for  golf  that 
he  used  to  give  to  it.  His  love  of  everything 
Welsh  is  seen  in  his  home  surroundings.  You 
rarely  find  any  domestic  in  his  household  except 
Welsh  girls,  with  whom  he  always  speaks  in 
Welsh. 

Society  bores  him.  If  he  wants  an  enjoyable 
evening  he  gathers  his  friends  about  him,  and 
he  can  spend  an  evening  listening  even  more 
willingly  than  talking.    He  loves  all  shows  es- 

269 


pecially  the  theatre  and  the  music-hall.  If  he 
had  time  he  would  visit  them  often.  They 
nourish  his  dramatic  and  aesthetic  instincts  which 
were  repressed  in  boyhood. 

Sir  Herbert  Tree  once  asked  him  to  a  first 
night  and  to  supper  afterwards  in  the  Dome. 
As  he  walked  home  with  his  wife  in  the  full 
light  of  a  summer  morning  through  St.  James's 
Park  to  Downing  Street,  he  said  to  her:  "Would 
you  and  I  have  ever  thought  ten  years  ago  that 
we  would  have  gone  to  a  theatrical  supper  and 
enjoyed  it?" 

There  is  nothing  too  absurd  for  him  in  music- 
hall  songs;  sometimes  when  he  is  in  especially 
good  spirits  he  sings  snatches  of  them  with  great 
enjoyment;  usually  he  has  learned  them  from 
one  of  his  daughters. 

The  most  marked  and  characteristic  feature 
of  his  private  life  is  his  intense  family  affection. 
No  villager  in  Wales  could  show  a  simpler 
family  setting  than  that  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George. 
One  evening  a  journalistic  friend  came  into  the 
house  and  asked  where  was  the  "Hyena" — the 
name  applied  to  him  by  a  German  journal  after 
his  famous  "knock  out"  interview.  He  found 
the  "hyena"  seated  on  a  sofa  with  an  arm  around 
the  waist  of  each  of  his  two  daughters.  When 
one  of  his  daughters  died,  his  friends  still  recall 
with  dread  the  agony  of  his  grief ;  one  says  that 
in  spite  of  his  natural  gaiety  he  has  never  looked 

270 


quite  cheerfully  at  life  since.  The  greater  soft- 
ness of  temper,  the  unusual  patience,  something 
mystic  in  his  spiritual  outlook  are  perhaps  some 
of  the  consequences  of  that  blow. 

He  cares  for  little  in  life  but  politics.  He 
keeps  all  his  strength  for  his  career.  This  is  one 
of  the  reasons  for  what  would  otherwise  appear 
to  be  inconsiderate  carelessness.  He  is  inun- 
dated with  letters;  he  answers  only  a  few  of 
them;  and  so  gets  into  trouble;  often  is  so  ab- 
sorbed in  big  things  that  he  will  not  allow  him- 
self to  fritter  away  time  on  unessentials.  Yet  he 
can  be  soft  and  yielding  up  to  a  point. 

There  is  never  anything  "brutal" — an  epithet 
applied  to  him  by  another  German  paper  re- 
cently— in  either  his  words  or  his  demeanor. 
He  often  allows  himself  to  be  bored  and  put 
out  rather  than  get  rid  of  somebody  who  is  in 
the  way,  but  he  will  not  allow  himself  to  be 
bothered  or  diverted  from  his  work  by  a  great 
lady  or  by  the  great  mob;  life  is  too  short  and 
too  full  of  big  things  to  be  wasted. 

One  of  his  extraordinary  tastes  is  his  passion- 
ate love  of  a  sermon.  He  often  says  that  he 
prefers  a  good  sermon  to  a  good  play.  He 
quotes  by  the  yard  rhetorical  passages  from  the 
extensive  pulpit  literature  of  his  country.  Over 
and  over  again,  he  will  roll  out  the  great  phrases 
of  a  preacher  denouncing  the  rich  who  grind  the 
faces  of  the  poor,  "The  wood  is  drying  in  the 

271 


sun  that  will  make  their  coffins."  He  is  a  great 
reader;  and  though  he  hesitates  to  speak  French 
he  knows  French  pretty  well  and  reads  a  good 
French  novel  with  pleasure  and  some  facility. 

Take  him  all  in  all,  he  has  more  than  the  usual 
complexity  of  the  Celtic  character.  He  is  often 
unwilling  to  begin  work,  but  once  he  begins  he 
finds  it  difficult  ever  to  give  it  up.  He  can  work 
immensely,  though  he  gets  very  tired;  but  then 
he  can  sleep  anywhere  and  at  any  time:  often 
on  Saturday  or  Sunday  afternoons  he  sleeps  on 
a  couple  of  chairs.  He  is  ordinarily  cheerful 
and  grows  more  even  tempered  with  the  years, 
but  he  has  moments  of  depression,  and  in  his 
youth  he  was  said  to  be  haunted  by  the  vision 
of  early  death,  like  that  of  his  father. 

He  is  very  soft;  though  at  times  he  can  be 
very  hard.  At  once  the  most  pliant  and  the  most 
obstinate  of  men ;  he  can  be  broad  of  vision,  and 
under  the  strong  and  tenacious  will  he  can  put 
his  mind  in  blinkers;  he  has  sometimes  weird 
insight  as  of  a  genius;  he  seldom  looks  back; 
and  is  always  confident  of  the  future. 

Though  he  was  not  brought  up  in  Celtic- 
Christian  superstitions;  the  atmosphere  of  his 
mind  is  semi-religious,  semi-fatalistic  which 
strikes  one  as  strange  in  a  man  whose  outlook 
is  so  matter  of  fact.  He  has  always  a  saving 
sense  of  the  transience  of  human  things  which 

272 


stands  between  him  and  an  excessive  enjoyment 
of  the  triumphs  of  life. 

The  question  of  questions  now  is  what  is  to 
be  hoped  from  Mr.  Lloyd  George  as  a  social 
reformer.  He  has  not  studied  social  questions 
deeply,  knows  little  or  nothing  of  the  disadvan- 
tages from  an  industrial  point  of  view  of  our 
present  competitive  or  grab-as-grab-can  society; 
but  his  sympathies  are  democratic  and  he  under- 
stands the  disabilities  of  poverty.  Had  he  lis- 
tened to  Socialistic  or  Fabian  orators,  instead  of 
sermons,  I  should  be  more  hopeful  of  him. 

I  do  not  know  for  certain  how  far  Mr.  Lloyd 
George's  zeal  for  human  equality  has  been  side- 
tracked ;  but  connection  with  the  Marconi  scan- 
dal would  of  itself  be  sufficient  to  explain  his 
failure  to  deal  drastically  with  the  economic 
problems  of  his  country. 

Nobody  believes  that  Lloyd  George  specu- 
lated in  Marconi  shares  from  the  usual  sordid 
motives;  he  is  notoriously  careless  about  money; 
as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  he  used  to  say 
laughingly  that  it  was  his  wife  who  took  care 
of  his  purse  and  the  only  result  of  Ministerial 
rank  to  him  is  the  possession  of  the  modest  house 
at  Criccieth  which  may  have  cost  $6,000  or 
$8,000.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  was  per- 
suaded to  "have  a  flutter"  in  Marconi  shares  by 
Sir  Rufus  Isaacs,  then  the  Attorney- General, 
but  the  gamble  which   led   Sir  Rufus  Isaacs 

273 


directly  to  a  peerage  and  the  position  of  Lord 
Chief  Justice  weakened  Lloyd  George  a  good 
deal  as  a  reformer.  How  could  he  attack  the 
landlords  when  his  own  hands  were  not  im- 
maculate? 

We  can  afford  to  be  frank  in  this  matter.  It 
was  said  very  often  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
worked  with  Lord  Northcliffe  because  Lord 
Northclifie  knew  the  details  of  the  Marconi 
business  and  Mr.  Lloyd  George  dared  not  break 
with  him.  But  now  to  the  confusion  of  the 
scandal-mongers  Mr.  Lloyd  George  has  broken 
with  Lord  Northcliffe  and  no  disclosures  have 
been  made  becausee  there  was  nothing  to  dis- 
close. I  dislike  more  than  I  can  say  the  common 
habit  of  explaining  the  inconsistencies  of  public 
men  by  some  low  personal  motive.  It  is  Mr. 
Lloyd  George's  knowledge  I  doubt,  not  his 
honesty.  Besides,  if  England  waits  for  a  re- 
former till  she  gets  an  angel,  she'll  wait  a  long 
time. 

Lloyd  George  has  a  touch  of  genius  in  him 
and  with  genius  go  a  good  many  amiable  human 
weaknesses;  but  the  genius  who  wins  out  as  a 
benefactor  to  humanity  is  the  man  who  turns  his 
stumblings  into  stepping  stones. 

What  then  is  his  position  at  the  moment. 
Without  probing  too  curiously,  facts  speak  for 
themselves. 

About  the  time  when  the  Coalition  Govern- 
274 


ment  was  formed  and  the  Conservative  leaders, 
Mr.  Bonar  Law,  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour  and  Sir 
Edward  Carson,  joined  the  Liberal  Ministry  in 
the  Cabinet,  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  Land  Com- 
mission was  dissolved  and  his  1,700  or  more  paid 
investigators  discharged.  Since  then  no  one  of 
position  in  England  has  spoken  of  the  evils  of 
landlordism  or  the  millennium  of  land  national- 
ization. Social  reforms  were  summarily  shelved 
and  Lloyd  George  did  not  even  protest. 

He  was  appointed  Minister  of  War,  and  the 
job  of  providing  munitions  which  Kitchener 
had  hopelessly  bungled,  he  accomplished;  he 
took  over  hundreds  of  private  factories  and 
nationalized  them;  he  socialized  a  vast  industry 
and  extended  it  beyond  precedent  while  turning 
over  surplus  profits  to  the  Treasury;  he  proved 
in  England  what  in  Germany  has  been  proved 
again  and  again,  that  a  nationalized  industry 
could  beat  any  private  industry  both  in  pro- 
ductive power  and  cheapness.  Lloyd  George 
did  even  more  than  this.  He  advocated  con- 
scription and  turned  Lord  Kitchener's  paper 
army  into  a  real  national  army;  he  animated 
the  whole  people  with  his  spirit  and  enormously 
increased  the  strength  of  Great  Britain  as  a 
fighting  force. 

Think  of  his  speech  at  Bangor  in  the  summer 
of  1916,  when  he  criticized  severely  the  lack  of 
high  spirit  in  Great  Britain.    "We  have  not  yet 

275 


given  up  drink,"  he  cried,  "as  it  has  been  given 
up  in  France  and  Russia.  .  .  .  We  laugh  at 
things  in  Germany,"  he  went  on,  "which  should 
terrify  us.  Look  at  the  way  they  make  bread 
out  of  potatoes.  I  fear  that  spirit  of  cheerful 
self-sacrifice  more  than  I  do  Field  Marshal  von 
Hindenburg's  strategy,  efficient  though  it  may 
be."  He  then  proceeded  to  criticize  the  ship- 
wrights on  the  Clyde  for  striking  for  higher 
wages  at  such  a  crisis  and  sneered  at  the  farth- 
ing an  hour  they  were  holding  out  for.  He 
would  have  done  better  had  be  blamed  the  rich 
employers  whose  profits  had  more  than  doubled 
in  the  year,  while  their  "hands"  have  had  no 
share  in  the  wealth  they  created.  Twenty  years 
ago  the  hard  meanness  of  the  rich  would  have 
furnished  Lloyd  George  with  his  text,  and  not 
the  pitiful  hopes  of  the  poor.  Still,  the  personal 
force  and  drive  of  the  man  grow  steadily  in 
importance. 

One  question  imposes  itself?  Why  on  earth 
did  he  allow  his  Land  Commission  to  be  dis- 
solved without  any  protest?  Perhaps  he  was  not 
strong  enough  then  to  fight  the  oligarchy.  But 
why  did  he  allow  his  settlement  of  the  Irish 
difficulty,  after  it  had  been  accepted  by  all  con- 
cerned, to  be  thrown  aside  by  Lord  Lansdowne? 

Think  of  it;  he  was  called  upon  by  Mr.  As- 
quith  to  leave  his  munition-providing  and  settle 

276 


the  Home  Rule  question  that  had  flamed  into 
rebellion  and  turned  the  fairest  part  of  Dublin 
into  a  heap  of  burning  ruins. 

At  once  he  accepted  the  task  that  had  baffled 
English  statesmanship  for  fifty  years.  He 
brought  Mr.  Redmond  and  Sir  Edward  Carson 
into  one  room  and  within  a  few  days  drew  them 
to  an  agreement  and  set  forth  his  settlement, 
which  was  accepted  by  Mr.  Asquith  and  the 
Coalition  Government.  But  in  a  week  or  so 
the  oligarchy  had  got  over  its  scare;  the  soldiers 
had  mastered  the  rebels;  the  revolt,  the  Lords 
thought,  was  at  an  end.  At  once  Lord  Lans- 
downe  coolly  got  up  in  the  House  of  Lords,  de- 
clared that  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  settlement  was 
temporary  and  would  have  to  be  conducted  by 
Dublin  Castle  as  in  the  past.  Mr.  Redmond 
protested  and  appealed  to  Mr.  Asquith.  Mr. 
Asquith,  who  was,  so  to  speak,  the  electric  clock 
which  registered  the  dynamic  energies  of  the 
moment,  bowed  his  head  to  Lord  Lansdownc 
and  murmured,  "We'll  see;  we'll  seel"  To 
every  one's  astonishment.  Lord  Lansdowne  won 
without  a  struggle  and  combative  Lloyd  George 
took  the  astounding  rebuff  lying  down. 

I  am  afraid  it  looks  as  if  he  had  given  up  the 
cause  of  moral  and  social  reform  and  accepted 
the  present  aristocratic  constitution  of  English 
society.  During  the  war  he  was  always  against 
the  workingmen:  he  condemned  the  shipwrights 

277 


for  striking  as  he  had  condemned  the  Welsh 
miners  for  striking. 

I  must  again  and  again  reiterate  it,  for  it  is  one 
of  the  highest  moral  lessons  of  the  war:    Eng- 
land will  not  win  anything  worth  having  unless 
she  gets  rid  of  her  effete  oligarchy,  and  by  some 
great  act  of  social  justice,  such  as  giving  the 
land  back  to  the  people  of  England,  reanimates 
the  downtrodden  millions  of  her  wage-slaves. 
If  England  had  treated  her  poorer  classes  as 
well   as   Germany  has   treated   her  workmen, 
Lloyd  George  would  not  have  had  to  complain 
of  their  apathy  and  want  of  spirit.     Men  fight 
for  life  in  measure  as  life  is  worth  having.    One- 
third  of  the  population  of  Great  Britain  is  al- 
ways on  the  verge  of  starvation.    Why  should 
the  starving  poor  fight  for  the  country  which 
has  condemned  them  to  suffering  and  misery? 

Give  them  hope  of  independence  and  comfort 
and  you  won't  have  to  complain  of  their  want  of 
spirit.  Give  them  the  land  which  is  theirs  and 
the  railroads  and  the  mines  and  the  manhood 
suffrage  which  should  be  theirs  and  you  will 
have  again  the  spirit  of  the  French  sans  culottes, 
who  without  training  and  almost  without  equip- 
ment beat  the  Germans  at  Valmy  and  thus  laid, 
as  Goethe  saw,  the  foundations  of  the  modern 
world. 

The  name  of  Lloyd  George  is  often  coupled 
with  that  of  Lincoln. 

278 


The  comparison  is  not  far-fetched. 

Both  men  sprang  from  the  people;  both  gave 
repeated  proofs  of  democratic  sympathy;  both 
got  their  opportunity  in  war.  And  in  spite  of 
the  reverence  we  all  feel  for  Lincoln,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  Lloyd  George's  achievements  in 
the  first  years  of  tbe  war  were  at  least  equal  to 
Lincoln's  in  the  same  time.  He  organized  labor 
with  the  most  extraordinary  success  and  in  the 
Home  Rule  settlement  showed  rarer  quality  still 
— a  power  of  sympathy  and  comprehension  that 
marks  him  as  a  great  Reconciler. 

Lincoln's  greatness  was  shown  in  his  deep 
humanity;  he  always  preferred  pardon  to  pun- 
ishment and  lately  Colonel  Watterson,  of  the 
Louisville  Courier-Journal,  has  proved  that 
even  in  the  last  six  months  of  the  war,  when  the 
South  was  beaten  and  on  the  verge  of  collapse, 
Lincoln  offered  the  Confederates  the  most  ex- 
traordinarily generous  terms;  he  went  so  far  as 
to  oflfer  to  pay  the  full  price  for  the  slaves  he 
had  already  freed;  "he  did  not  want  victory/* 
he  said,  "much  less  a  triumph;  but  an  abiding 
and  healing  peace." 

Lloyd  George  took  almost  the  same  stand ;  but 
in  the  peace  negotiations  he  has  forgotten  his 
humanity. 

Lloyd  George  stands  at  the  parting  of  the 
ways;  his  conduct  of  the  war  has  given  him 

279 


power  such  as  no  one  has  had  in  England  since 
Chatham.    How  will  he  use  it? 

From  his  management  of  the  recent  election 
it  looks  as  if  he  would  go  on  in  the  old,  bad 
adroit  way.  He  told  the  electors  and  the  newly 
enfranchised  millions  of  women  that  he  would 
make  Germany  pay  for  the  war,  and  the  electo- 
rate believed  his  impudent,  ridiculous  assurance. 
The  grateful  electors  said  practically  what  they 
have  always  said  in  like  case :  "We  trust  you  and 
will  wait."  But  he  must  have  known  that  he  was 
promising  the  impossible:  Germany  is  utterly 
unable,  even  if  she  were  willing,  to  pay  for  the 
war.  In  order  to  retrieve  his  position  and  re- 
build his  dwindling  popularity  he  promised  to 
have  the  Kaiser  tried  in  London.  But  such 
clap-trap  could  not  win  even  the  English  masses : 
they  are  above  such  petty  malignity.  He  prom- 
ised, then,  disarmament,  the  end  of  conscription, 
the  use  of  the  land  for  the  soldiers,  the  nationali- 
zation of  the  railways — all  these  promises  are 
still  unfulfilled,  indeed  their  realization  in  the 
near  future  manifestly  depends  rather  on  the 
spirit  of  the  workingman  than  the  reforming 
zeal  of  the  politician. 

Still  at  any  moment  Lloyd  George's  early  re- 
ligious training  may  come  to  his  aid;  or  some 
touch  of  imagination. 

If  Lloyd  George  will  not  be  the  savior  of  the 
people,  nevertheless  they  shall  find  salvation. 

280 


Sooner  or  later  a  social  revolution  will  do  for 
England  what  her  politicians  refuse  to  do.  But 
Lloyd  George  has  an  unique  opportunity;  he 
partly  sees  it;  will  he  at  length  realize  it  and 
set  his  hand  to  the  work?  If  he  will  nation- 
alize the  English  land  and  English  railroads  and 
mines,  he  will  rank  in  the  future  with  Lincoln. 
If  not,  he,  too,  will  be  like  Mr.  Chamberlain — 
"a  lost  leader"  with  absurd  promises  to  show 
that  he  could  not  read  the  signs  of  the  times. 


281 


VISCOUNT   GREY 

MET  Viscount  Grey  for  the  first 
time  some  thirty  years  ago  at  a  din- 
ner given  by  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  who 
had  been  Under-Secretary  for  For- 
eign Affairs  and  had  made  his  rep- 
utation there  as  very  painstaking,  easy  of  ap- 
proach, and  fair-minded. 

When  I  shook  hands  with  my  host  on  entering 
the  drawing  room  he  drew  me  aside. 

"Edward  Grey  is  dining  with  us  to-night,"  he 
said.  "You  ought  to  know  him;  he's  extraordi- 
nary and  will  go  a  long  way.  I'm  curious  to  see 
what  you'll  think  of  him." 

A  little  later,  he  took  me  across  to  the  fire- 
place and  introduced  me  to  Grey,  who  was 
standing  just  beside  the  vivid,  speaking  minia- 
ture portrait  of  Keats,  which  had  been  given  to 
Dilke's  grandfather  by  the  poet  himself.  Grey's 
quiet  was  the  first  thing  that  struck  me,  and  the 
carved,  strong  features  and  deep,  earnest  eyes. 
He  said  nothing  particular,  did  not  seem  to  re- 
gard it  as  a  duty  to  talk,  yet  was  perfectly  cour- 
teous. He  was  tall,  five  feet  ten,  I  should  guess, 
but  looked  taller  because  he  was  very  thin. 
At  first  one  didn't  notice  that  his  shoulders  were 
broad  and  his  leanness  the  hard  fitness  of  the 
trained  athlete.     All  Grey's  qualities  come  to 

282 


'^1 


Right  Hon.  Viscount  Grey 


'  ^^ ' 


,4«tl*^ 


you  slowly;  reveal  themselves  one  after  the  other, 
in  intimacy;  yet  he  is  not  shy  nor  has  he  the 
conventional  pose  of  reticence  as  "good  form": 
reserve  is  natural  to  him. 

Though  a  Member  of  Parliament  v^ho  had 
not  yet  succeeded,  he  did  not  appear  anxious  to 
impress  the  journalist,  not  desirous  even  to  show^ 
his  powers,  and  yet  somehow  or  other  he  was 
impressive — called  forth  curiosity.  His  face 
was  of  the  type  known  as  Roman;  the  bird  of 
prey  type,  not  thin,  but  chiseled  like  a  cameo; 
high-beaked  nose,  iron-firm  jaw,  broad  fore- 
head; strength,  the  characteristic  of  it  all — 
strength  and  self-mastery  and  assured  poise — a 
puzzling  fellow:  what  was  his  secret? 

At  dinner  he  never  led  the  talk,  never  tried 
to;  but  when  spoken  to  replied  quietly,  without 
emphasis ;  he  brought  forth,  I  remember,  one  or 
two  platitudes  which,  though  well  worn,  seemed 
to  have  some  weight  when  he  used  them.  He 
possesses  eminently  the  characteristic  which 
Emerson  gives  the  English  gentleman :  "He  says 
less  than  he  means,  and  never  more."  Grey's 
tone  was  pitched  low  to  unobtrusiveness. 

My  hasty  judgment  stands  on  record  against 
me.  I  wrote  of  him  next  day:  "There  have 
been  several  generations  of  Greys  but  Sir  Ed- 
ward Grey,  the  M.  P.,  though  the  youngest  of 
the  lot,  is  really  the  oldest;  he  must  have  been 
born  old ;  dried  up  in  premature  prudence." 

283 


I'm  not  ashamed  of  this  offhand  judgment,  for 
Grey  is  extraordinarily  prudent  and  his  reserve 
was  misinterpreted  by  other  observers.  Harold 
Frederic,  perhaps  the  ablest  journalist  the 
United  States  ever  sent  to  London,  formed  much 
the  same  opinion  as  I  did.  After  dinner  we 
came  together  with  Dilke  for  a  final  powwow 
before  separating,  and  Frederic's  verdict  was: 
"Grey  says  nothing  because  he  has  nothing  to 
say." 

English  social  life  is  a  good  deal  less  talkative 
than  French  or  American  life,  and  we  had  both 
met  dozens  of  Englishmen  who  were  very  silent 
because  they  were  inarticulate  or  empty-headed, 
and  so  we  were  ready  to  let  prejudice  judge. 

It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  Dilke  did  not  agree 
with  us.  He  was  a  born  Parliamentarian;  by 
this  I  mean  he  knew  the  British  Parliament 
better  than  other  men  and  loved  it  more.  If  you 
wanted  a  fair  judgment  of  any  British  politician, 
Dilke  was  your  man.  For  thirty  years  he  was  a 
sort  of  Parliamentary  mirror  that  would  give 
you  as  true  a  reflection  of  Biggar  or  Parnell, 
the  most  hated  of  Irishmen,  as  of  Gladstone  or 
Lord  Hartington,  the  most  respected  of  Eng- 
lishmen. 

"You're  both  mistaken,"  he  said  positively; 
"Grey  has  made  a  great  impression  in  the  House 
and  apparently  without  trying  to  make  any  im- 
pression, and  that's  a  good  sign." 

284 


"What  do  you  mean  'without  trying?'  I  asked. 

"I  mean,"  he  replied,  "that  instead  of  picking 
some  big  debate  and  a  crowded  House  for  his 
best  speeches,  he  just  gets  up  in  an  ordinary  way 
and  yet  makes  his  mark.     Grey  has  the  great 


manner." 


"What  an  aristocrat  you  are  at  heart,  Dilke," 
cried  Frederic,  "in  spite  of  your  so-called  Rad- 
icalism. Another  genius  earmarked  by  the 
governing  classes  for  great  place  because  he 
belongs  to  the  sacrosanct  caste  and  has  nice 


manners." 


"So  you'll  concede  his  manners,'*  replied 
Dilke,  laughing.  "You  know  he's  an  old  Wyke- 
hamist, and  the  motto  of  Winchester  is:  "Man- 
ners makyth  man."  While  Dilke  went  on  to 
explain  Winchester  College  to  Frederic,  telling 
of  its  old  foundation  and  how  some  of  the 
scholars  still  ate  off  thick  flat  oaken  platters  as 
their  forbears  had  done  four  centuries  before,  I 
couldn't  help  noticing  how  the  phrase  "manners 
makyth  man"  had  been  degraded  in  England. 
Of  course,  at  first  the  word  "manners"  was  the 
English  translation  of  the  Latin  mores  (French, 
moeurs),  and  stood  for  customs,  morals,  rather 
than  mere  "manners."  The  modern  English 
have  practically  altered  "character  makes  a 
man"  into  "manners  make  a  man"  —  a  degra- 
dation, I  think  soul-revealing. 

Meanwhile  the  talk  went  on.  Dilke  told  us 
285 


that  Grey  came  of  an  old  Whig  family,  and  had 
the  Whig  tradition  of  modernity  and  urbanity. 
Frederic  asked  him  about  Grey's  means,  and  we 
found  out  that  when  Grey  came  of  age  he  had 
inherited  some  two  thousand  or  three  thousand 
pounds  a  year  (say  about  fifteen  thousand  dol- 
lars), and  a  very  nice  house  with  some  two 
thousand  acres  of  land. 

"He's  comfortably  off,"  Dilke  concluded, 
"though  he  married,  very  young,  a  neighbor  of 
his  in  Northumberland,  a  Miss  Dorothy  Wid- 
drington  of  Newton  Hall,  who  also  comes  of 
famous  stock.  ..." 

Though  my  first  published  impression  of 
Grey  was  summary  and  harsh,  it  created  a  cer- 
tain stir;  yet  it  did  not  alter  Grey's  cordial  man- 
ner to  me  in  the  slightest.  When  we  met  he 
was  always  very  courteous.  A  little  later  I  found 
occasion  to  praise  him  warmly;  neither  praise 
nor  blame  had  the  smallest  effect  on  his  imper- 
turbable, smiling  politeness.  Evidently  his  quiet 
reserve  covered  a  certain  depth — ^what  depth? 

Grey's  immediate  success  in  the  House  of 
Commons  is  very  characteristic,  and  is  one  of 
the  best  things  I  can  say  of  the  House  after  a 
quarter  of  a  century's  knowledge  of  it.  He  spoke 
seldom  and  never  at  great  length;  said  nothing 
novel,  yet  arrested  attention — created  an  inter- 
est in  his  personality  and  left  an  impression  of 
most  scrupulous  honor. 

286 


After  being  some  six  years  in  Parliament  he 
was  made  Under-Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs 
in  1892,  when  he  was  only  just  thirty.  Lord 
Rosebery,  his  chief,  being  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
the  brunt  of  the  work  fell  on  Grey  in  the  Com- 
mons. In  an  hour  he  confirmed  his  reputation, 
a  reputation  of  the  sort  that's  most  esteemed  in 
England,  a  reputation  for  high  character.  And 
every  year  of  office  afterwards  increased  his 
authority  in  the  House  and  his  influence  till  he 
came  to  be  regarded  with  a  certain  awe. 

His  unique  position  is  due  to  a  variety  of 
causes,   personal   and   political,   but  the   chief 
cause  is  undoubtedly  his  manner.     England  is 
the  only  country  in  the  world  where  a  man  may 
win  to  the  front  by  mere  manners,  but  the  man- 
ners must  be   English.     Every  nation  has  its 
ideal,  and  the  governing  classes  in  England,  who 
give  the  tone  to  the  House  of  Commons  and  the 
House  of  Lords,  cherish  a  peculiar  ideal  of 
manner,  the  manner  of  a  cold,  courteous,  quiet 
master.     Lord  Lansdowne  has  a  good  deal  of 
this  manner,  and  in  itself  it  is  sufficient  to  ac- 
count for  his  influence  as  leader  of  the  Conserv- 
ative party  in  the  Upper  House.    It  is  rare,  in- 
deed, that  anyone  in  the  House  of  Lords  raises 
his  voice;  emotion  or  passion — excitement  of 
any  kind — is  regarded  as  a  sign  of  weakness. 

Grey's  manner  will  suit  the  House  of  Lords 
even  better  than  it  suited  the  Commons.     Be- 

287 


sides,  it  is  the  fitting  vesture  of  his  spirit  and 
curiously  perfect. 

Let  us  study  it  in  its  effects.  Grey's  manner 
naturally  appealed  to  the  Conservatives  first; 
very  soon  they  threw  down  their  arms  before  it 
and  declined  to  attack  him.  "Grey's  all  right," 
they  said;  "a  true-blue  Englishman."  And 
when  in  the  South  African  War  he  stood  aloof 
from  his  party,  in  favor  of  war,  they  took  him 
to  their  heart  of  hearts.  Their  belief  that  he 
was  an  aristocrat  in  mind  as  well  as  manner 
appeared  to  be  justified.  "Of  course  he's  an 
Imperialist,"  they  chortled ;  "he  has  no  sympathy 
with  the  Radical  crew  and  their  peace-at-any- 
price  rot;  you  can  count  on  Grey;  Grey's  a  great 
Englishman." 

There  was  danger  for  a  year  or  two,  danger 
that  Grey,  so  honored  by  his  opponents,  would 
yield  to  the  flattering  pressure  and  become  too 
masterful,  too  Imperialistic,  too  Conservative, 
in  fine.  From  the  beginning  the  Radicals  were 
inclined  to  dislike  and  to  distrust  him ;  his  reti- 
cence, his  balance,  his  studied  moderation,  were 
offensive  to  them ;  the  Labor  members  and  Radi- 
cals, inclined  to  suspect  good  manners  as  a  mask, 
detested  his  suave  imperturbability.  It  was  an 
advantage,  they  admitted,  that  Grey  should  con- 
ciliate the  Conservatives,  but  no  one  could  do 
this,  they  argued,  unless  he  was  at  heart  one  of 
them.  For  years  they  refused  him  any  cordial 
support.  238 


When  Lloyd  George  brought  in  his  Socialist 
state-insurance  measures  and  spoke  with  pas- 
sionate sympathy  for  the  half-paid  working 
classes  and  their  wrongs,  the  ordinary  Liberals 
were  as  much  alarmed  as  the  crusted  Tories. 

Everyone  who  counted  was  against  him;  yet 
soon  it  was  whispered  about  the  House  with 
wonder  that  Grey  was  a  thoroughgoing  sup- 
porter. The  air  cleared  as  by  magic.  The 
sullen  Radical  distrust  vanished  like  vapor. 

From  that  moment  on  Grey  reigned  in  the 
House,  and,  strange  to  say,  it  was  the  extreme 
members  on  both  sides  who  built  up  his  pedestal. 
The  Tory  was  delighted  to  recount  his  feats  at 
tennis:  "About  the  best  player  in  England, 
don't  ye  know."  And  even  the  Socialists  found 
pleasure  in  the  fact  that  his  chief  recreation  was 
fly  fishing,  and  not  hunting  or  shooting  or  any- 
thing that  resembled  luxury  and  entailed  waste. 

For  five  or  six  years  before  the  war  Grey  had 
applause  enough  to  turn  a  strong  head  and  no 
opposition  of  any  sort.  Perhaps  that  explains  in 
part  why  he  prepared  for  war  and  when  the 
moment  came  was  willing  to  make  it,  without 
consulting  his  colleagues,  as  an  autocrat. 

Besides  doing  excellently  well  whatever  he 
undertakes,  Grey  has  other  virtues.  In  an  aris- 
tocratic society  everything  is  known;  but  no 
word  has  ever  been  breathed  against  Grey  in  his 
private  relations.   Thou8:h  neither  a  Puritan  nor 

289 


unduly  strait-laced,  his  married  life  was  under- 
stood to  be  very  happy,  and  when  his  wife  was 
killed  a  few  years  ago  in  a  carriage  accident, 
just  in  front  of  his  own  gates,  he  was  known  to 
have  suffered  intensely. 

The  man  is  all  of  a  piece;  no  flaw  in  his  un- 
sullied armor. 

Now  I  must  come  to  his  soul  and  depict  the 
heart  of  him.  Fortunately  the  chief  features  are 
distinct.  Like  all  of  us,  his  best  is  discovered  in 
his  admirations:  what  we  love  reveals  us,  if  it 
does  not  betray.  Above  all  writers.  Grey  ad- 
mires Wordsworth,  and  Wordsworth's  utmost 
reach  of  spirit  is  to  be  found  in  his  delight  in 
nature  on  the  one  hand  and  on  the  other  in  his 
passionate  love  of  England  and  the  highest  Eng- 
lish ideals. 

Everyone  remembers  the  famous  passage  in 
which  all  Wordsworth's  joy  in  nature  found  ex- 
pression ;  it  begins : 
Nature  never  did  betray  the  heart  that  loved  her- 

Grey  feels  the  appeal  of  this  just  as  strongly 
as  the  poet  felt  it.  His  fly-fishing  is  hardly  more 
than  an  excuse  to  gratify  his  love  of  nature  and 
his  delight  in  solitary  communion  with  her. 
There  is  a  natural  melancholy  in  such  a  spirit. 
Every  lover  of  the  ideal  must  often  be  disap- 
pointed and  saddened  through  his  intercourse 
with  men  and  women,  and  he  will  turn  eagerly 
from  the  silly,  self-admiring  puppets  to  the  tran- 

290 


quil  beauty  of  woodland,  lake,  and  mountain  foi 
recreation  and  healing.  Viscount  Grey  finds 
himself  in  the  ordered  loveliness  of  the  English 
countryside. 

And  Wordsworth's  love  of  England  and  what 
he  imagines  that  England  stands  for  in  the  world 
is  even  more  intense  and  passionate  than  his  love 
of  nature.  In  spite  of  his  disgust  at  the  "sordid- 
ness"  of  England — "the  fen  of  stagnant  waters," 
Wordsworth  had  all  an  Englishman's  belief  in 
his  country's  unique  greatness  and  destiny: 

.    ...  In   our  halls  is  hung 
Armory  of  the  invincible  Knights  of  old: 
We  must  be  free  or  die,  who  speak  the  tongue 
That  Shakespeare  spake;  the  faith  and  morals 

hold 
Which    Milton    held. — In    everything    we   are 

sprung 
Of  Earth's  first  blood,  have  titles  manifold. 

Edward  Grey  loves  England  like  this;  in- 
indeed,  his  love  for  her  is  the  motive  power  of 
his  life,  and  his  belief  in  her  the  passionate  faith 
of  his  soul.  To  say  he  would  die  for  her  gladly 
is  to  put  the  fire  of  his  patriotism  too  coldly; 
he  wants  nothing  in  life  now  but  to  spend  and 
be  spent  for  her;  he  has  measured  himself;  he 
would  far  rather  be  another  Chatham  than  a 
Lenin.  His  shortcoming  is  that  he  does  not  see 
the  corresponding  German  belief  in  the  same 
clear  reasonable  light. 

291 


Is  Grey,  then,  a  great  man?  It  is  very  hard 
to  say;  he  has  not  yet  finished  his  work.  He 
has  always  shown  rigid  strength  of  character. 
In  this  war  he  has  proved  himself  a  consummate 
diplomatist,  carrying  public  opinion  with  him, 
even  the  public  opinion  of  all  the  neutral  States 
for  the  first  year,  at  least,  with  perfect  ease,  and 
yet  to  some  of  them  England's  objects  must  have 
appeared  sufficiently  sordid. 

The  German  papers,  even  the  official  organs, 
all  condemn  Grey;  call  him  a  "liar";  talk  of 
"his  genius  for  duplicity" ;  but  independent  jour- 
nals in  Italy,  as  in  the  United  States  and  in 
Spanish  South  America,  are  loud  in  his  praise. 
Whom  are  we  to  believe? 

I  have  tried  to  give  my  readers  the  facts,  so 
that  they  can  form  their  own  judgment.  I  have 
a  high  opinion  of  Grey's  honesty,  sincerity,  and 
nobility  of  purpose,  and  a  great  liking  for  the 
man  himself,  yet  I  cannot  but  wish  that  he  had 
kept  the  peace  in  1914  as  he  kept  it  in  1911.  I 
believe  his  opponents  are  just  as  responsible  for 
the  war  as  he  is;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  if  he 
had  really  wished  it,  he  could  have  held  back 
both  France  and  Russia  and  maintained  peace. 
We  know  now  that  six  of  the  Cabinet  resigned 
when  they  found  that  Grey  had  thrust  England 
into  the  struggle.  But  four  withdrew  their 
resignations  when  Asquith  reminded  them  how 
necessary  it  was  to  show  a  united  front  to  the  foe. 

292 


Still  the  fault  may  not  be  counted  against 
Grey  in  history.  Bismarck  admitted  that  he  had 
made  the  war  with  France,  yet  Bismarck  stands 
and  will  stand  as  the  greatest  statesman  and 
leader  of  men  since  the  first  Napoleon.  But 
Bismarck  waged  only  victorious  wars  and  cer- 
tainly strengthened  and  enlarged  his  country. 
Bismarck,  too,  though  a  Junker  and  imperialist 
to  boot,  is  memorable  chiefly  because  of  his  work 
for  the  welfare  of  the  laboring  classes.  He 
practically  banished  starvation  from  Germany 
and  insured  the  destitute  against  the  worst  results 
of  competitive  labor;  in  his  pity  for  weakness 
the  strong  man  laid  broad  bases  for  eternity  in 
the  affection  of  mankind.  Will  Grey  do  as 
much?  I  doubt  it;  yet  one  can  only  wait  and 
hope. 

One  fact  gives  me  pause,  makes  me  wonder 
whether  any  English  statesmen  will  ever  be  able 
to  rise  above  the  conventions  of  English  public 
life. 

Viscount  Grey  began  his  official  career  as 
Under-Secretary  to  Lord  Rosebery,  who  was 
Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs.  Now,  when  For- 
eign Secretary  himself,  he  appointed  Neil  Prim- 
rose, the  youngest  son  of  Lord  Rosebery,  his 
Under-Secretary.  Neil  Primrose  was  only 
thirty-two  years  of  age;  had  only  been  in  Parli- 
ment  since  1910,  and  had  given  no  sign  of  com- 
manding abilty  or  even  of  singular  suitability 

293 


for  that  office.  He  was  the  son  of  his  father,  and, 
therefore,  preferred  before  abler  men. 

The  governing  classes  in  England  all  hold  to- 
gether and  regard  political  office  as  their  ap- 
panage; indeed,  they  act  as  if  all  the  high  offices 
of  state  were  to  be  shared  out  among  them  and 
their  supporters,  and  so,  for  the  most  part,  they 
have  mediocrities  as  dignitaries  and  the  purblind 
as  guides,  and  the  nation  suffers  in  consequence. 
It  is  more  than  a  pity  that  Edward  Grey  did 
not  hold  himself  above  such  weakness.  I'm 
pretty  sure  I  am  right  in  attributing  the  appoint- 
ment to  him :  he  had  so  much  influence  that  Mr. 
Asquith  would  never  have  dreamt  of  appoint- 
ing anyone  in  his  department  without  consulting 
Grey;  and  Grey  probably  reconciled  the  ap- 
pointment to  his  conscience  by  thinking  of  it  as 
a  graceful  compliment  to  his  old  chief,  and  Grey 
is  nothing  if  not  loyal.  And  now,  willy-nilly,  I 
must  tell  of  his  shortcomings. 

His  chief  stumbling-block  has  been  that  he 
does  not  know  German  or  Germany;  he  does  not 
even  know  French;  his  mental  outlook  is  insular 
and  limited.  He  saw  how  rapidly  Germany  was 
growing  as  an  industrial  competitor  of  England 
in  wealth  and  power;  but  he  had  no  conception 
of  the  virtues  which  made  her  growth  inevitable. 
Grey's  reputation,  like  many  more  important 
things,  depends  on  the  outcome  of  the  war  and 
the  aftermath. 

294 


If  the  Allies  had  overwhelmed  Germany 
quickly,  he  would  have  been  a  popular  hero  in 
England  and  France;  his  failings  would  all  have 
been  forgotten ;  his  virtues  belauded. 

The  war  lasted  so  long,  cost  so  much,  and 
brought  forth  so  little  good  that  Grey's  reputa- 
tion has  suffered.  The  outward  and  visible  sign 
of  this  is  that  he  has  been  "kicked  upstairs"  and 
made  a  member  of  the  House  of  Lords — a  peer- 
age as  a  sort  of  consolation  prize.  The  best 
thing  I  can  say  for  Grey  is  that  no  personal 
advantage,  no  honor,  will  ever  console  him  for 
having  led  his  country  into  a  war  which  has 
already  cost  more  in  blood  and  treasure  than 
England  can  get  out  of  it. 

The  war  has  shown  England's  strength  and 
England's  weakness;  but  alas  I  she  is  being 
praised  for  diplomacy  which  she  does  not  ad- 
mire and  has  failed  in  the  field  where  she 
thought  herself  supreme.  Everyone  knows  that 
if  she  had  not  induced  America  to  enter  the  war, 
she  would  have  been  forced  to  conclude  even  an 
ignoble  peace  before  the  summer  of  1917.  True, 
she  has  got  the  German  ships  and  most  of  the 
German-African  colonies;  true,  her  great  com- 
mercial rival  is  lamed  if  not  ruined,  but  the 
price  paid  has  been  enormous,  altogether  dispro- 
portionate, she  is  inclined  to  believe. 

Moreover,  the  war  has  revealed  Germany's 
strength,  the  strength  of  order,  discipline,  learn- 

295 


ing  and  socialized  industries.  Vaguely  in  spite 
of  her  customary  habit  of  self-praise,  England 
feels  she  has  not  come  brilliantly  out  of  the  des- 
perate trial  and  consequently  is  inclined  to  blame 
Grey.  And  what  does  Grey  feel?  Doubtful,  I 
imagine;  but  with  a  certain  faint  hope  in  the 
League  of  Nations  and  a  warmth  about  the 
heart  when  he  remembers  that  the  great  plateau 
of  Central  Africa  from  the  Cape  to  Cairo  is  now 
English — a.  landlord  pride  in  broad  acres. 


296 


George  Clemenceau 


GEORGES    CLEMENCEAU: 

A  First  Rate  Fighting  Man ! 

N  THE  third  year  of  the  world- 
war  the  task  of  governing  France 
had  become  exceedingly  difficult. 
From  the  very  beginning  Ministers 
had  worked  with  the  Socialists  in  or- 
der to  buttress  their  popularity.  But  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1917  Albert  Thomas  and  other  socialists 
refused  to  enter  the  Cabinet  and  Ministry  after 
Ministry  fell,  partly  through  their  vote,  partly 
through  the  growing  discontent.  France  was 
tired  of  the  war;  as  the  book  "Under  Fire," 
showed,  the  soldiers  in  the  trenches  were  all 
wearied  of  the  fighting.  They  saw  or  thought 
they  saw  that  every  inch  of  French  soil  would 
have  to  be  bought  back  with  torrents  of  French 
blood ;  they  didn't  think  the  game  worth  the  can- 
dle. More  than  once  French  soldiers  threw 
down  their  weapons  and  left  the  field;  it  must 
be  admitted  that  there  was  a  general  belief  that 
in  fighting  was  no  freedom  and  from  bloodshed 
no  deliverance. 

The  Socialists  feeling  the  support  of  the  army 
behind  them,  stood  more  and  more  strongly 
against  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  more  and 

297 


more  resolutely  in  favor  of  an  immediate  peace. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  sentiment  of  the  govern- 
ing classes  was  to  hold  with  England  and  prose- 
cute the  war  to  victory  at  all  costs.  It  was  the 
dominance  of  this  class  that  brought  Clemen- 
ceau,  the  most  masterful  Radical,  back  to  power. 
Every  representative  of  the  French  people  knew 
that  he  was  the  best  fighting  man  they  had;  he 
was  hated  personally  but  accepted  as  a  last  hope. 

And  when  you  ask  why  he  was  and  is  so  de- 
tested you  are  told  that  for  twenty  years  h^ 
brought  Ministry  after  Ministry  to  a  fall  till  he 
became  known  as  the  "Tombeur  des  Ministeres," 
or  "The  Wrecker,"  but  that  is  not  the  real  ex- 
planation of  his  unpopularity.  The  truth  is  he 
is  too  big  a  man  to  be  popular  and  he  has  besides 
a  bitter  vein  in  him  which  most  people  dislike. 
For  instance,  almost  as  soon  as  he  came  to  power 
again  he  was  asked  by  some  Socialist  in  the 
Chamber  what  were  his  plans.  He  replied:  "I 
have  only  one  plan,  to  win  the  war  and  drive  the 
invaders  out  of  France."  And  then  he  paused 
and  turned  to  the  House,  "and  when  I  have  suc- 
ceeded you  can  bring  in  a  vote  of  censure  on  me 
and  it  will  no  doubt  be  carried  unanimously 
with  the  aid  of  the  good  friends  who  now  cheer 


me. 


This  complete  disillusionment;  this  pun- 
gent bitterness  is  the  very  soul-characteristic  of 
Georges  Clemenceau  and  such  a  pitiless  naked 

298 


vision  of  reality  is  always  and  everywhere  un- 
popular. 

Georges  Clemenceau  is  almost  a  great  man, 
utterly  unlike  the  politicians,  the  Briands,  the 
Vivianis,  the  Asquiths  and  the  Wilsons,  clever 
self-seekers  and  speakers.  There  is  something 
dynamic  in  the  man ;  he  is  almost  of  the  race  of 
the  Bismarcks.  Let  me  try  to  give  a  picture  of 
him,  body,  mind  and  soul.  He  is  short  and 
sturdily  built,  with  vital  organs,  heart,  etc.,  dis- 
proportionately large  and  strong,  with  a  good 
round  head  and  small  blue-gray  eyes  set  wide  a- 
part;  the  forehead  broad  like  the  chin  and  jaws. 
He  listens  intently,  then  decides  abruptly,  will- 
force  rather  than  thought  the  first  characteristic 
of  him. 

He  is  one  of  the  most  famous  duellists  of  his 
time,  the  most  dreaded  opponent  with  both 
sword  and  pistol  in  France  since  Paul  de  Cas- 
sagnac  died.  Everyone  remembers  his  historical 
quarrel  with  Paul  Deroulede.  His  enemies  had 
accused  him  of  being  opposed  to  the  alliance 
with  Russia;  forged  letters  were  circulated  to 
prove  that  he  had  sold  French  interests  to  Eng- 
land. Deroulede,  a  hot-headed  but  honest  pa- 
triot, believed  all  the  slanders,  persuaded  him- 
self too,  that  Clemenceau's  own  colleagues  were 
suspicious  of  him  but  afraid  to  attack  him  be- 
cause of  his  skill  with  pen  and  sword,  so  he  made 
himself  the  mouthpiece  of  the  general  hatred 

299 


and  denounced  Clemenceau  as  a  traitor  to  his 
country. 

The  whole  assembly  sat  with  indrawn  breath 
wondering  how  Clemenceau  would  answer.  He 
walked  quietly  to  the  Tribune  and  then:  "M. 
Deroulede,  you  lie." 

They  met  next  day  and  parted  without  injury. 
Clemenceau,  recognizing  the  honesty  of  his  en- 
emy, fired  in  the  air.  A  week  later  the  forgeries 
were  discovered,  but  already  the  mischief  wa? 
done.  Clemenceau  had  to  resign;  his  political 
career  appeared  to  be  ended. 

As  soon  as  he  lost  his  premiership  in  1908 
Clemenceau  turned  to  writing  and  showed  him- 
self a  fine  workman  if  not  a  master  in  the  new 
field.  He  produced  a  play  which  filled  the 
Renaissance  theatre  for  a  good  many  nights;  he 
wrote  a  novel,  too,  "The  Strongest"  (Les  Plus 
Forts),  a  satire  of  social  conditions  too  acrid  to 
be  popular,  and  a  book  of  philosophic  essays 
which  gave  him  rank  as  political  thinker.  For- 
tunately I  can  give  my  readers  some  idea  of  his 
gift  as  a  writer. 

The  other  evening  at  the  French  Theatre  in 
New  York  a  little  Chinese  play  by  Clemenceau 
was  given  which  seemed  to  me  peculiarly  char- 
acteristic of  the  man.  A  blind  Chinese  gentle- 
man is  presented  as  very  happy  in  the  love  of 
his  wife  and  the  aflFection  of  friends.  He  recov- 
ers his  sight  and  finds  out  that  his  wife  is  betray- 

SQO 


ing  him  with  his  best  friend  and  his  hired  com- 
panion is  cheating  him  of  his  fame  as  a  poet. 
After  a  series  of  such  experiences,  he  blinds  him- 
self again  willingly:  "One  must  be  blind  to  be 
happy,"  he  says.  The  moral  is  harshly  acid, 
but  has  some  truth  in  it. 

There's  a  short  story  of  Clemenceau  still  more 
biting.   It  is  called  "Simon,  fils  de  Simon." 

Simon,  son  of  Simon,  plays  in  the  lottery  and 
prays  to  Jehovah  for  success,  promising  him  a 
fifth  part  of  the  gain,  but  he  wins  nothing.  Then 
he  invokes  the  God  of  the  Christians,  making  the 
same  promise,  and  is  awarded  the  Grand  Prize. 
The  coffers  of  the  church  grow  no  richer  for  his 
good  fortune.  "The  proof  that  Jahveh  is  su- 
perior to  the  Christian  God,"  he  reasons  is  that 
he  knew  that  "I  could  never  bring  myself  to  part 
with  a  hundred  thousand  florins.  He  knoweth 
our  hearts.  He  does  not  expect  the  impossible 
from  us.  The  Christian  God  was  deceived  by 
my  good  faith,  of  which  I  was  for  a  time  the 
dupe  myself.    Jahveh  alone  is  great,  my  son." 

Clemenceau  is  the  only  politician  in  the  world 
to-day  who  can  write  plays  and  stories  that  de- 
serve consideration. 

In  his  own  way,  too,  Clemenceau  is  one  of  the 
most  effective  speakers  living.  Like  everything 
he  does,  his  speaking  is  intensely  characteristic ; 
he  stands  rigidly.talks  slowly,deliberately  rather, 
as  if  he  were  weighing  every  word  and  seldom 
raises  or  alters  the  inflection  of  his  voice.    But 

301 


his  clear  incisive  tone  compels  attention,  espe- 
cially in  a  Chamber  where  everyone  is  inclined 
to  be  wordy  and  rhetorical.  There  is  no  orna- 
ment, no  appeal,  no  wish  to  round  out  a  period ; 
a  clear  frank  acrid  statement  of  facts,  with  nov. 
and  again  a  biting  phrase,  a  word  cruel  in  its 
sarcasm. 

One  can  get  some  idea  of  his  power  of  retort 
from  a  story  told  of  his  fi^st  premiership.  He 
had  hardly  assumed  power  when  a  well-known 
selfseeking  prefect  called  upon  him  and  began: 

"I  hope  you'll  believe  M.  Clemenceau,  that  I 
am  not  here  to  adore  the  rising  sun." 

At  once  Clemenceau  interrupted.  "I  under- 
stand ;  you  don't  know  on  which  side  to  look  for 
it,  eh?" 

His  power  as  a  political  writer  can  be  meas- 
ured by  one  incident.  It  was  the  Dreyfus  affair 
that  really  brought  him  back  to  power.  He  was 
among  the  first  to  be  convinced  of  the  Jewish 
officer's  innocence,  and  at  once  opened  the  col- 
umns of  his  paper  to  Zola  and  other  defenders. 
His  own  articles  were  able,  quite  as  able  as  those 
of  Zola;  indeed,  it  was  Clemenceau  suggested 
the  famous  ''J' accuse"  of  the  papers  which  made 
Zola's  defence  of  Dreyfus  rank  forever  with  Vol- 
taire's defence  of  Calas. 

There  are  great  things  in  the  man.  He  has 
not  only  labored  indef  atigably  as  First  Minister, 
but  has  given  his  whole  strength  to  encourage 
the  army  leaders. 

302 


No  matter  how  heavy  or  difficult  his  own 
work  was,  again  and  again  in  those  dreadful  six 
months  from  March  to  September,  1918,  the  old 
man  would  leave  Paris  early  in  the  morning  and 
hasten  by  train  and  motorcar  to  the  point  of  at- 
tack. There  he  would  consult  with  General 
Foch  or  General  Gouraud,  as  the  case  might  be, 
and  was  always  full  of  fight.  Whoever  might 
doubt  he  never  doubted.  He  was  the  hero  soul 
of  France  incarnate  and  assured  of  final  victory. 

There  is  a  magnanimity  in  him  which  reminds 
one  of  Bismarck  and  Frederick  the  Great.  It  is 
known  that  the  French  only  instituted  the  cen- 
sorship because  of  the  English  example.  The 
first  act  of  Clemenceau  when  he  was  recently 
made  Premier  for  the  second  time,  was  to  abol- 
ish the  political  censorship.  When  questioned 
in  the  Chamber  he  said  quietly  that  he  believed 
in  freedom  both  of  thought  and  speech  and 
didn't  mind  what  anyone  said  of  him  or  his  gov- 
ernment. An  opponent  tried  to  score  off  him  by 
saying  that  they  all  hoped  he  would  free  the  soil 
of  France. 

"I  shall  do  my  best,"  replied  Clemenceau, 
tartly;  "in  the  meantime  it  is  something  to  have 
freed  the  soul  of  France." 

The  whole  Chamber  applauded. 

It  is  not  to  denigrate  him  that  I  say  in  the 
Peace  Conference,  he  showed  the  defects  of  his 
disillusionment  and  intense  combativencss.    He 

303 


wished  to  lame  Germany  once  for  all  and  render 
her  powerless;  his  fighting  spirit  prevented  him 
seeing  that  this  was  the  moment  to  conquer  by 
high-souled  generosity.  If  he  had  refused  to 
take  Alsace-Lorraine  or  only  taken  such  parts  as 
would  be  accorded  by  an  ethnological  Commis- 
sion, he  would  have  shown  his  faith  in  justice 
and  right  and  would  have  proved  himself  the 
superior  of  Bismarck.  Bismarck,  it  will  be  re- 
membered, did  not  wish  to  annex  Lorraine  after 
'70;  it  was  Moltke  who  insisted  on  keeping 
Metz.  Alsace,  Bismarck  held,  was  German  in 
every  sense. 

But  Clemenceau  has  taken  Alsace  as  well 
Lorraine,  and  the  coal-mines  of  the  Saar  that 
are  completely  German  and  he  wanted  the  whole 
of  the  German  Rhine  provinces  to  boot.  He  is 
shortsighted  in  his  greed  and  has  overreached 
himself.  Germany  will  have  Strassburg  before 
there  can  be  any  enduring  peace.  Clemenceau 
said  the  other  day  that  in  the  Peace  Conference 
he  won  more  than  he  expected  to  win,  more  than 
France  ever  hoped  to  win.  That's  the  fact; 
thanks  to  Mr.  Wilson  he  has  won  too  much. 

He  is  all  of  a  piece.  He  is  the  only  French- 
man of  position  in  1871  who  declared  that  they 
should  not  make  peace  with  Germany,  but  fight 
the  thing  to  a  finish.  Everybody  sees  now  that 
he  was  wrong;  it  was  his  fighting  spirit  and  not 

304 


his  wisdom  that  dictated  his  counsel,  and  that 
fact  we  must  today  keep  in  mind. 

Let  me  glance  back  for  a  moment  at  his  youth 
and  early  training  and  see  if  his  past  throws  any 
new  light  on  his  peculiar  powers. 

Twenty-five  years  ago  Clemenceau  was  a  great 
friend  of  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  one  of  the  few  Eng- 
lishmen who  knew  French  as  well  as  he  knew 
English  and  was  besides  a  confirmed  Radical. 

Shortly  after  Dilke's  fall  he  gave  me  a  letter 
to  Clemenceau.  Dilke  was  an  able  man,  but  he 
had  nothing  dynamic,  no  touch  of  greatness  in 
him.  Clemenceau  was  of  a  higher  class.  I  was 
very  eager  to  know  about  his  duels  and  was  as- 
tonished to  find  he  practiced  either  sword  or 
pistol  almost  every  day. 

"Fencing,"  he  declared,  "is  the  best  form  of 
exercise  that  anyone  can  take;  it  keeps  the  eye 
and  hand  and  foot  in  perfect  trim  and  tune;  if 
there  is  a  weak  point  in  you  it  will  show  up  on 
the  ^terrain.'  And  if  there  is  a  weak  point  in 
your  mind,"  he  would  add,  laughingly,  "you 
will  find  it  in  the  cut  and  thrust  of  a  debate  in 
the  Chamber."  He  loves  fighting  for  its  own 
sake;  he  is  a  perfect  incarnation  of  the  Gallic 

I  wanted  to  know  about  his  early  life,  and  he 
told  me  that  his  father  was  a  stalwart  Repub- 
lican and  had  been  imprisoned  by  Napoleon  III 
at  the  Coup  d'Etat. 

His  mother  was  so  well  educated  that  she 
305 


was  able  to  prepare  him  for  high  school.  He 
spoke  of  himself  always  as  a  product  of  the 
great  French  revolution. 

Before  he  was  twenty  he  was  thrown  into  pris- 
on for  crying  "Vive  la  Republique,"  during  the 
celebration  of  an  imperial  anniversary.  He 
served  his  time  in  jail  and  then  came  to  Ameri- 
ca. Between  1865  and  1869  he  lived  in  New 
York  and  in  Stamford,  Conn.  He  established 
himself  as  a  medical  practitioner  at  West  12th 
Street  and  for  some  time  was  well  known  about 
Washington  Square. 

He  was  never  interested,  he  told  me,  in  medi- 
cine, though  his  thesis  on  anatomy,  a  presenta- 
tion copy  of  which  can  be  found  in  the  Astor 
Library,  is  an  admirable  treatise. 

Clemenceau  learned  a  great  deal  in  America ; 
but  he  is  chary  of  saying  what  he  thinks  of  it;  he 
avoids  unprofitable  condemnation  by  an  epi- 
gram: "Americans  have  no  original  ideas  and 
no  coffee  fit  to  drink." 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  his  judgment 
of  America  is  somewhat  summary  and  severe. 
He  was  not  able  to  make  a  living  as  a  doctor. 
Though  he  knew  English  remarkably  well,  he 
was  not  sufficiently  master  of  it  for  his  mind  to 
move  freely  in  that  rather  heavy  harness,  so  he 
suffered  a  good  deal  from  poverty  in  New  York 
and  finally  got  employed  by  a  Miss  Aiken  in  a 
girls'  boarding  school  at  Stamford  as  a  teacher 

306 


of  French.  That  America  could  use  Georges 
Clemenceau  in  no  higher  way  than  as  teacher  of 
French  in  a  young  ladies'  seminary  is  sufficient 
criticism  of  our  civilization  to  anyone  who  un- 
derstands the  full  significance  of  the  fact. 

While  a  teacher  he  translated  the  political 
economy  of  John  Stuart  Mill  into  French  and 
thereby  showed  the  deeper  affinities  of  his  mind. 
Like  the  Englishman  he  was  a  believer  in  indi- 
vidualism and  therefore  in  liberty  in  the  widest 
sense.  But  like  Mill,  too,  he  had  an  active  sense 
of  social  justice;  thought  that  employment 
should  be  found  by  the  state  for  anyone  who 
wanted  it  and  that  a  minimum  wage  and  a  very 
high  minimum  wage  should  be  given  to  all 
working  men  and  women.  A  born  individual- 
ist, he  yet  believed  in  the  nationalization  of  rail- 
ways, telegraphs,  telephones  and  all  public  utili- 
ties; but  he  has  always  felt  that  progress  comes 
through  the  gifted  individual  and  by  virtue  of 
his  efforts  and  in  no  other  way. 

He  fell  in  love  with  one  of  his  pupils  and  mar- 
ried her  in  June,  1869.  A  year  later  he  returned 
with  his  wife  to  France.  After  some  years  Mrs. 
Clemenceau  obtained  a  divorce  and  Clemenceau 
married  again. 

During  the  Franco-Prussian  war  Clemenceau 
was  mayor  of  Montmartre  and  one  of  his  duties 
was  to  see  that  150,000  men  were  properly  fed. 
He  thus  became  responsible  for  large  amounts  of 

307 


money,  and  foreseeing  the  accusations  that  might 
be  brought  against  any  official's  honesty  in  those 
trying  times,  he  took  the  precaution  from  the  be- 
ginning of  engaging  an  expert  accountant  to 
take  charge  of  and  disburse  every  cent  of  the 
public  funds. 

At  the  end  of  the  war,  though  mayor  of  the 
most  popular  district  of  Paris,  he  stood  out 
against  the  Commune;  yet  for  five  long  years  he 
worked  for  a  general  amnesty  for  all  the  Com- 
munards. He  thought  them  mistaken  but  after 
all  they  were  Frenchmen.  From  1871  to  1875 
he  was  a  member  of  the  Paris  Municipal  Coun- 
cil of  which  he  became  President. 

In  70  he  was  elected  member  from  Mont- 
martre  to  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  where  at 
once  he  was  hailed  as  leader  by  the  Radicals. 

Clemenceau  soon  became  more  a  subject  of 
dread  and  dislike  to  his  own  side  than  to  his  op- 
ponents. He  founded  a  newspaper.  La  Justice, 
a  great  daily,  and  used  it  as  a  weapon.  He  de- 
stroyed the  de  Broglie  administration.  He  first 
helped  and  then  overthrew  Boulanger.  He 
caused  the  fall  of  Jules  Grevy,  and  of  Jules  Fer- 
ry. He  wrecked  the  activities  and  position  of 
Freycinet  again  and  again. 

Yet  his  own  policy  was  a  consistent  radical 
Republicanism,  clear  and  practical ;  he  stood  for 
the  realization  of  all  that  the  first,  great  revol- 
ution had  dreamed.     He  was  wiser  than  his 

308 


rivals ;  he  opposed  the  alliance  with  Russia,  de- 
termined that  his  country  should  not  be  joined 
in  close  friendship  with  a  despotism.  He  urged 
constantly  the  development  of  French  resources 
to  the  utmost. 

In  November,  1906,  he  became  Premier.  As 
some  one  said,  "the  Conscience  of  France"  came 
to  power.  He  chose  for  his  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  his  friend  Stephen  Pichon,  who  served 
him  again  in  1918  and  1919.  Both  Pichon 
and  Clemenceau  were  soon  tested.  In  those 
years  the  Kaiser  was  continually  rattling  his 
sword;  he  had  bullied  over  the  Schnaebele  af- 
fair; he  had  got  Delcasse  dismissed;  now  the 
Casablanca  incident  gave  him  another  opportu- 
nity; would  France  again  give  in?  Clemenceau 
refused  the  German  demand,  not  with  the  courte- 
ous phrases  of  diplomacy,  but  flatly  and  without 
qualification.  In  November,  1908,  he  called  the 
Kaiser^s  bluff.  Strange  to  say,  this  triumph  let 
to  his  fall.  ' 

Delcass^  his  old  enemy,  rose  up  suddenly  and 
overthrew  his  Ministry.  A  discussion  over  naval 
affairs  sprang  up  almost  overnight.  There  were 
scandals,  investigations,  controversies.  For  the 
first  time  in  his  Parliamentary  career,  Clemen- 
ceau lost  his  head.  At  least  he  lost  his  temper, 
declared  that  Delcasse  had  "humiliated  France," 
and  in  consequence  was  himself  ousted  from  of- 
fice.   He  kept  his  position,  however,  in  the  Scn- 

309 


ate.  In  1912  he  overthrew  Caillaux'  Ministry. 
In  1913  he  wrecked  Briand's  Cabinet  on  the 
issue  of  proportional  representation.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  he  started  a  new  paper, 
L'Homme  Libre — The  Freeman — ^which  was 
suppressed;  at  once  he  started  it  again  as  "The 
Man  in  Chains." 

In  April,  1918,  he  was  outspoken  in  his  cen- 
sure of  the  management  of  the  allied  offensive. 
He  was  somewhat  scornful  of  America's  long- 
continued  neutrality,  but  was  enthusiastic  in  his 
welcome  when  the  United  States  at  length  en- 
tered the  war. 

And  now  what  is  there  to  hope  or  fear  from 
Clemenceau?  First  of  all,  he  is  seventy-seven 
years  old;  all  the  leading  politicians  in  France 
dislike  him;  the  Socialists  dislike  him  the  more 
because  he  sympathizes  with  some  of  their  aims 
and  yet  holds  himself  aloof.  Has  he  done  any- 
thing new?  Has  he  done  anything  new  since 
the  Armistice?  Is  he  likely  to  do  anything  mem- 
orable in  the  future? 

I  am  fain  to  believe  that  he  reached  his  high- 
est height  in  the  summer  of  1918  when  he  forced 
the  unification  of  command  under  Foch  by 
threatening  to  make  peace  with  Germany  if  the 
suggestion  were  rejected  and  made  himself  as  I 
have  described,  the  life  and  soul  of  the  French 
offensive. 

Now  he  declares  that  after  all  the  peace  ar- 
310 


rangements  have  been  carried  out  he  will  retire 
from  political  life;  his  life's  work  rounded, 
crowned  if  you  will,  by  an  unique  triumph.  But 
such  complete  success  proclaims  his  limitations. 
Clemenceau  belongs  to  the  day  and  hour  and  the 
future  will  owe  him  little  or  nothing.  He  is  as 
fine  an  embodiment  of  the  French  fighting  spirit 
as  time  has  produced;  but  France  has  always 
been  rich  in  great  fighters ;  he  is  absolutely  hon- 
est, too.  in  a  greedy  age,  and  singularly  disinter- 
ested; in  private  life  he  can  be  magnanimom;, 
but  when  called  on  to  play  statesman  he  showed 
himself  greedy  and  vindictive  and  thereby  laid 
upon  his  country  too  heavy  a  burden. 

Cromwell,  surely  a  fighting  man  if  ever  there 
was  one,  when  asked  once  about  his  parents,  said 
that  he  loved  his  mother,  but  always  admired  his 
father  intensely  because  he  was  never  satisfied 
with  any  bargain  in  which  he  got  the  best  of  the 
other  man.  Even  the  Romans  who  thought  it 
well  to  conquer  the  proud,  knew  that  it  was  wise 
to  be  generous  to  the  defeated. 

When  will  politicians  learn  that  no  treaty  or 
compact  can  endure  that  is  not  founded  on  jus- 
tice, and  that  loving-kindness  is  the  only  binding 
tie  between  men  and  nations? 

For  Clemenceau  the  definitive  signing  of 
peace  and  the  elections  in  January,  1920,  must 
be  the  end.  He  broke  a  rib  the  other  day 
merely  traveling  to  London  and  my  prediction 

311 


of  four  months  ago  that  if  he  allowed  himself 
to  stand  for  President  he  would  be  defeated  by 
Paul  Deschanel  has  been  fulfilled.  Twenty-six 
years  ago  they  fought  a  duel  and  Clemenceau 
wounded  Deschanel  savagely;  now  time  has 
brought  retribution  and  Clemenceau  has  had 
to  submit  to  a  final  defeat;  yet  he  has  done 
enough  and  more  than  enough  to  ensure  him  a 
high  place  in  the  Pantheon  of  French  worthies 
forever. 


312 


j...J^  kWii,' 


Shaw  as  Seen  by  Max 


SHAW'S  PORTRAIT  BY  SHAW,  or 

HOW   FRANK  OUGHT  TO   HAVE 
DONE    IT. 

{After  finishing  my  pen-portrait  of  Shaw  I 
sent  him  a  copy  asking  him.  to  correct  any  errors 
in  it.  He  replied  by  telling  me  that  it  was  in- 
corrigible and  sending  me  the  following  portrait 
of  himself  as  an  example  of  how  I  ought  to  have 
written  about  him.  Just  as  I  published  Shaw's 
views  of  Oscar  Wilde  in  my  book  on  Wilde  so 
now  I  publish  Shaw's  self-portrait  so  that  my 
readers  can  compare  it  with  my  view  of  him. — 

Frank  Harris.) 

EFORE  attempting  to  add  Bernard 
Shaw  to  my  collection  of  Contem- 
porary Portraits  I  find  it  necessary 
to  secure  myself  in  advance  by  the 
fullest  admission  of  his  extraordinary 
virtues.  Without  any  cavilling  over  trifles  I  de- 
clare at  once  that  Shaw  is  the  just  man  made 
perfect.  I  admit  that  in  all  his  controversies, 
and  in  all  possible  controversies,  with  me  or  any- 
one else,  Shaw  is,  always  has  been,  and  always 
will  be,  right.  I  perceive  that  the  common  habit 
of  abusing  him  is  an  ignorant  and  silly  habit, 
and  that  the  pretence  of  not  taking  him  seriously 
is  the  ridiculous  cover  for  an  ignominous  retreat 

313 


from  an  encounter  with  him.  If  there  is  any 
other  admission  I  can  make,  any  other  testi- 
monial I  can  give,  I  am  ready  to  give  it  and  to 
apologize  for  having  omitted  it.  If  it  will  help 
matters  to  say  that  Shaw  is  the  greatest  man 
that  ever  lived,  I  shall  not  hesitate  for  a  moment. 
All  the  cases  against  him  break  down  when 
they  are  probed  to  the  bottom.  All  his  prophe- 
cies come  true.  All  his  fantastic  creations  come 
to  life  within  a  generation.  I  have  an  uneasy 
sense  that  even  now  I  am  not  doing  him  justice 
— that  I  am  ungrateful,  disloyal,  disparaging. 
I  can  only  repeat  that  if  there  is  anything  I  have 
left  out,  all  that  is  necessary  is  to  call  my  atten- 
tion to  the  oversight,  and  it  shall  be  remedied. 
If  I  cannot  say  that  Shaw  touches  nothing  that 
he  does  not  adorn,  I  can  at  least  testify  that  he 
touches  nothing  that  he  does  not  dust  and  polish 
and  put  back  in  its  place  much  more  carefully 
than  the  last  man  who  handled  it. 

Once,  at  a  public  dinner  given  by  the  Stage 
Society,  Shaw  had  to  propose  the  health  of  the 
dramatic  critics;  and  Max  Beerbohm  had  to 
reply.  Before  the  speaking  began  Max  came 
to  Shaw  and  said,  "You  are  going  to  say,  aren't 
you,  that  you  are  a  critic  yourself?"  "I  don't 
know  what  I  am  going  to  say,"  said  Shaw;  "but 
I  daresay  I  shall  bring  that  in."  "Promise  me 
that  you  will,"  said  Max:  "I  want  to  make  a 
point  about  it".    "Anything  to  oblige  you,"  said 

314 


Shaw;  and  he  did.  Max  began  his  speech  thus: 
"I  was  once  at  a  school  where  the  master  used 
always  to  say,  'Remember,  boys,  that  I  am  one 
of  yourselves.'  "  A  roar  of  laughter  saved  Max 
the  trouble  of  pointing  the  moral. 

Robert  Lynd  said  of  Shaw's  "Common  Sense 
About  the  War"  that  though  nobody  could  take 
any  reasonable  exception  to  it,  yet  from  the 
moment  it  appeared  the  war  was  spoken  of  and 
written  about  as  a  war  between  the  Allies  on 
the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  Germany, 
Austria,  Turkey  and  Bernard  Shaw. 

When  Shaw  contested  a  seat  at  the  London 
County  Council  election  as  a  Progressive,  after 
six  years  hard  Progressive  drudgery  on  a  Bor- 
ough Council,  with  the  advantage  of  being  one 
of  the  inventors  of  municipal  Progressivism,  not 
only  was  he  defeated  by  the  defection  of  all  the 
Liberals  and  temperance  reformers  (Shaw  is  a 
teetotaler)  ;  but  the  leading  Progressive  papers 
also  exulted  in  his  defeat  as  a  most  blessed  de- 
liverance. The  only  people  who  voted  for  him 
were  those  who  had  never  voted  before.  This 
was  proved  by  an  enormous  increase  in  the  poll 
at  the  next  election. 

These  are  the  things  that  happen  to  him  in 
his  most  popular  moments,  when  he  is  in  no 
way  breasting  and  opposing  the  current  of  public 
opinion.  When,  as  often  happens,  he  has  to  take 
his  chance  of  being  Ivnched  for  telling  some 

315 


unpalatable  truth,  or  taking  some  unpopular 
side,  numbers  of  persons  who  have  never  before 
betrayed  any  hostility  to  him  have  been  em- 
boldened to  believe  that  they  had  him  "on  the 
run"  at  last,  and  have  suddenly  vented  on  him 
a  bitterness  and  violence  which  must  have  been 
rankling  in  them  for  years. 

The  result  is  that  hardly  anyone  who  has  not 
met  Shaw  thinks  of  him  otherwise  than  as  a  man 
of  disagreeable  appearance,  harsh  and  wound- 
ing manners,  and  insufferable  personality.  One 
of  his  favorite  sayings  is  "I  always  astonish 
strangers  by  my  amiability,  because,  as  no  human 
being  could  possibly  be  so  disagreeable  as  they 
expect  me  to  be,  I  have  only  to  be  commonly 
civil  to  seem  quite  charming." 

No  truthful  contemporary  portrait  can  ignore 
either  this  extraordinary  power  of  exciting  furi- 
ous hostility,  or  the  entire  absence  of  any  obvious 
ground  for  it.  It  has  been  said  that  Shaw  irri- 
tates people  by  always  standing  on  his  head,  and 
calling  black  white  and  white  black.  But  only 
simpletons  either  offer  or  accept  this  account. 
Men  do  not  win  a  reputation  like  Shaw's  by 
perversity  and  tomfoolery.  What  is  really  puz- 
zling is  that  Shaw  irritates  us  intensely  by  stand- 
ing on  his  feet  and  telling  us  that  black  is  black 
and  white  is  white,  whilst  other  men  please 
everybody  by  airing  the  most  outrageous  para- 
doxes and  by  repeating  with  an  air  of  conviction 

316 


what  everyone  knows  to  be  false.  There  is  some- 
thing maddening  in  being  forced  to  agree  with  a 
man  against  whom  your  whole  soul  protests.  It 
is  not  that  he  expresses  your  thought  more  accu- 
rately than  you  yourself  have  thought  it,  trying 
as  this  sort  of  correction  would  be  if  it  were 
made  consciously.  It  must  be  that  there  is  some- 
thing terrifying  in  finding  one's  views  shared 
by  a  man  whose  conclusions  are  known  to  be 
monstrous  and  subversive.  That  little  extra 
accuracy  often  reveals  the  brink  of  an  abyss 
somewhere  near.  It  is  as  if  a  man  had  offered 
to  walk  a  bit  of  the  way  with  you,  because  you 
were  going  in  the  direction  of  his  home,  and  you 
know  that  home  to  be  the  bottomless  pit 

Now  it  is  quite  true  that  Shaw's  final  and 
central  conclusion  is  monstrous  not  only  to  the 
average  conventional  man,  but  to  the  most  ardent 
revolutionist.  I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  that  he 
is  a  Socialist:  "we  are  all  Socialists  now,"  nor 
am  I  thinking  of  his  views  on  marriage;  for  he 
proposes  nothing  more  than  American  States 
and  some  European  ones  have  already  carried 
out  as  nearly  as  no  matter. 

His  religion  of  Creative  Evolution  is  shared 
by  hundreds  of  modern  thinkers — Bergson  for 
instance — who  do  not  incur  his  singular  unpop- 
ularity. Long  before  the  war  his  most  shocking 
play,  "Mrs.  Warren's  Profession,"  was  repudi- 
ated by  the  advanced  section  of  Moscow  Society 

317 


as  the  sermon  of  a  bourgeois  moralist;  and  before 
that  even  the  American  Bench  had  been  able  to 
find  nothing  in  it  that  justified  the  outcry  made 
against  it.  In  short,  there  is  nothing  in  Shaw's 
political  and  social  program,  not  even  his  in- 
sistence on  absolute  equality  of  income  and  its 
dissociation  from  every  kind  of  personal  indus- 
try or  virtue,  at  which  a  thinker  of  adequate 
modern  equipment  would  turn  a  hair.  He  is 
a  perfectly  safe  man  on  a  committee  of  any  sort: 
a  man  of  tact  and  moderation  who  kept  the 
Fabian  Society,  of  which  he  was  a  leader  for 
twenty-seven  years,  free  from  the  quarrels  that 
broke  up  all  the  other  Socialist  organizations. 

Yet  the  monstrosity  is  there.  Shaw  works  at 
politics  in  the  spirit  of  one  who  is  helping  a 
lame  dog  over  a  stile  which  he  believes  to  be 
insurmountable.  He  makes  no  secret  of  his  con- 
viction that  the  problems  raised  by  the  aggreg- 
ation of  men  into  civilization  are  beyond  their 
political  capacity,  and  will  never  be  solved  by 
them.  He  is  at  present  engaged  in  a  tetralogy 
in  which,  starting  from  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
and  ending  thousands  of  years  hence,  he  shows 
mankind  shortening  its  life  from  a  thousand 
years  to  three  score  and  ten,  and  again  lengthen- 
ing it  from  three  score  and  ten  to  three  hundred : 
a  prolongation  which,  as  a  Creative  Evolution- 
ist, he  holds  to  be  quite  possible  to  the  human 
will.    But  he  makes  no  secret  of  his  belief  that 

318 


Man  will  be  scrapped  as  a  failure,  and  that  the 
Life  Force  will  replace  him  by  some  new  and 
higher  creation,  just  as  man  himself  was 
created  to  supply  the  deficiencies  of  the  lower 
animals.  Fundamentally,  then,  Shaw  has  no 
reverence  for  us  or  for  himself.  And  how 
much  we  are  dependent  on  mutual  reverence 
we  never  realize  until  we  meet  someone  who 
denies  it  to  us.  Shaw  is  that  someone.  It  is 
impossible  to  take  ofifence,  because  he  is  as 
merciless  to  himself  as  to  us.  He  does  not 
kick  us  overboard  and  remain  proudly  on  the 
quarter  deck  himself.  With  the  utmost  good 
humor  he  clasps  us  affectionately  round  the 
waist  and  jumps  overboard  with  us,  and  that  too, 
not  into  a  majestic  Atlantic  where  we  might 
perish  tragically,  but  into  a  sea  of  ridicule  where 
we  cut  the  poorest  figure.  And  this  intolerable 
trick  is  played  on  us  at  the  most  unexpected  and 
inopportune  moments.  "No  man,"  said  Sir 
Henry  Norman,  "knows  how  to  butter  a  moral 
slide  better  than  Shaw."  Shaw's  support,  and 
even  his  enthusiastic  championship,  thus  be- 
comes more  dreaded  than  the  most  spiteful  at- 
tacks of  others.  During  the  first  Ibsen  boom  in 
London  Shaw  proposed  to  help  an  American 
actress  in  an  Ibsen  enterprise  by  interviewing 
her.  To  his  astonishment  the  lady  told  him  with 
passionate  earnestness  that  if  he  wrote  a  word 
about  her  she  would  shoot  him.    "You  may  not 

319 


believe  here  in  England  that  such  things  are 
possible,"  she  said;  "but  in  America  we  think 
differently;  and  I  will  do  it:  I  have  the  pistol 
ready."  "General  Gabler's  pistol,"  was  Shaw's 
unruffled  comment;  but  he  saw  how  intensely 
the  lady  shrank  from  being  handled  by  him  in 
print,  and  the  interview  was  not  written.  Some 
of  his  best  friends  confess  that  until  they  were 
used  to  him,  quite  friendly  letters  from  him 
would  sometimes  move  them  to  furious  out- 
bursts of  profanity  at  his  expense.  He  tells  a 
story  of  an  illiterate  phrenologist  with  whom 
he  got  into  conversation  at  a  vegetarian  restau- 
rant in  his  early  days.  This  man  presently  ac- 
cused Shaw  of  being  a  sceptic.  "Why?"  said 
Shaw.  "Have  I  no  bump  of  veneration?" 
"Bump!"  shouted  the  phrenologist.  "It's  a 
hole."  The  actor  Irving,  accustomed  to  a  defer- 
ence which  a  prelate  might  have  envied,  found 
Shaw  unendurable.  If  Shaw's  manners  were 
offensive  he  would  be  easier  to  deal  with;  but 
his  pity  for  you  as  a  hopeless  failure  is  so  kindly, 
so  covered  by  an  unexceptionable  observance  of 
the  perfect  republirin  respect  to  which  you  are 
entitled,  thtt  you  arc  utterly  helpless:  there  is 
nothing  to  complain  of,  nothing  to  lay  hold  of, 
no  excuse  for  snatching  up  the  carving  knife 
and  driving  it  into  his  vitals. 

I  was  the  editor  of  the  Fortnightly  Review 
when  I  first  met  Shaw  about  an  article.     He 

320 


had  an  engaging  air  of  being  much  more  inter- 
ested in  me  than  in  his  article.  Not  to  be  mock 
modest,  I  suppose  I  luas  more  interesting  than 
the  article;  and  I  was  naturally  not  disposed  to 
quarrel  with  Shaw  for  thinking  so  and  showing 
it.  He  has  the  art  of  getting  on  intimate  and 
easy  terms  very  quickly;  and  at  the  end  of  five 
minutes  I  found  myself  explaining  to  him  how 
I  had  upset  my  health  by  boyishly  allowing  my- 
self to  be  spurred  into  a  trial  of  speed  on  the 
river  in  an  outrigger,  and  overstraining  myself 
in  a  fierce  burst  of  speed.  He  gave  his  mind  to 
my  misfortune  as  sympathetically  as  my  doctor, 
and  asked  me  some  questions  as  to  what  sort  of 
care  I  was  taking  of  myself.  One  of  the  ques- 
tions was,  "Do  you  drink?"  I  was  equal  to  the 
occasion,  and  did  not  turn  a  hair,  as  I  assured 
him  that  a  diagnosis  of  delirium  tremens  could 
not  be  sustained ;  but  I  could  not  help  becoming 
suddenly  conscious  that  I  expected  from  men 
an  assumption  that  I  was  not  a  drunkard,  a  liar, 
a  thief,  or  anything  else  of  what  I  may  call  an 
actionable  nature,  and  that  I  was  face  to  face 
with  a  man  who  made  no  such  assumption.  His 
question  was  too  like  one  of  those  asked  in 
Butler's  "Erewhon"  to  be  entirely  agreeable  to 
human  frailty.  In  Shaw's  play,  "Captain  Brass- 
bound's  Conversion,"  the  captain  introduces  his 
lieutenant  with  the  words  (or  to  this  effect)  : 
''This  is  the  greatest  scoundrel,  liar,  thief  and 

321 


rapscallion  on  the  west  coast."  On  which  the 
lieutenant  says,  "Look  here,  Captain :  if  you  want 
to  be  modest,  be  modest  on  your  own  account, 
not  on  mine."  The  fact  that  Shaw  is  mode«t  on 
his  own  account,  and  gives  himself  away  much 
more  freely  than  his  good  manners  allow  him  to 
give  away  his  friends,  does  not  really  make  the 
latter  transaction  any  more  pleasant  for  its  vic- 
tim :  it  only  robs  them  of  their  revenge,  and  com- 
pels them  to  pay  tribute  to  his  amiability  when 
they  are  furiously  annoyed  with  him. 

It  is  difficult  to  class  a  man  who  gives  him- 
self away  even  to  the  point  of  making  himself 
ridiculous  as  vain.  But  all  Shaw's  friends  agree 
that  he  is  laughably  vain.  Yet  here  again  he 
complicates  our  judgment  by  playing  up  to  it 
with  the  most  hyperbolical  swank  about  his  in- 
tellect. He  declares  that  he  does  so  because 
people  like  it.  He  says,  quite  truly,  that  they 
love  Cyrano  and  hate  "the  modest  cough  of  the 
minor  poet."  Those  who  praise  his  books  to 
his  face  arc  dumbfounded  by  the  enthusiasm 
with  which  he  joins  in  his  own  praise,  and  need 
all  their  presence  of  mind  to  avoid  being  pro- 
voked into  withdrawing  some  seventy-five  per 
cent  or  so  of  their  estimate.  Such  playacting 
makes  it  difficult  to  say  how  much  real  vanity 
or  modesty  underlies  it  all;  but  I  feel  safe  in 
saying  that  Shaw,  of  late  years  at  least,  has  found 
out  his  own  value,  and  maybe  in  some  danger 

3Z2 


of  not  writing  off  his  inevitable  depreciation  by 
advancing  years  quite  fast  enough.  He  himself 
says  that  he  is  not  conceited.  "No  man  can  be," 
he  says,  "if,  like  me,  he  has  spent  his  life  trying 
to  play  the  piano  accurately,  and  never  succeeded 
for  a  single  bar."  I  ask  him  to  give  me  a  list 
of  his  virtues,  his  excellence,  his  achievements, 
so  that  I  may  not  do  him  the  injustice  of  omitting 
any.  He  replies:  "It  is  unnecessary;  they  are 
all  in  the  shop  window." 

Shaw  plays  the  part  of  the  modest  man  only 
in  his  relations  with  the  arts  which  are  the  great 
rivals  of  literature.  He  has  never  claimed  to 
be  "better  than  Shakespeare."  That  much 
quoted  heading  to  one  of  his  prefaces  has  a  note 
of  interrogation  after  it,  and  the  question  is  dis- 
missed by  himself  with  the  remark  that  as 
Shakespeare  in  drama,  like  Mozart  in  opera,  or 
Michael  Angelo  in  fresco,  reached  the  summit 
of  his  art,  nobody  can  be  better  than  Shake- 
speare, though  anybody  may  now  have  things  to 
say  that  Shakespeare  did  not  say,  and  outlooks 
on  life  and  character  which  were  not  open  to 
him.  Nevertheless,  I  am  convinced  that  Shaw 
is  as  willing  to  have  his  plays  compared  with 
Shakespeare's  as  Turner  was  to  have  his  pictures 
hung  beside  Claude's,  though,  he  has  not  said  so. 
But  his  attitude  towards  Rodin,  for  example,  is 
quite  different.  When  he  was  invited  to  a  din- 
ner in  Paris  given  in  honor  of  Rodin,  he  wrote 

323 


that  he  had  no  occasion  to  be  merely  Rodin's 
convive,  as  he  already  had  the  honor  of  being 
one  of  Rodin's  models,  and  was  sure  of  a  place 
in  the  biographical  dictionaries  a  thousand  years 
hence  as  *'Shaw,  Bernard:  subject  of  a  bust  by 
Rodin:  otherwise  unknown."  He  struck  the 
same  note  when,  finding  that  Rodin,  though  an 
infallible  connoisseur  in  sculpture,  had  no  books 
in  his  collection  except  the  commonest  kind  gf 
commercial  presentation  volumes,  he  presented 
him  with  a  Kelmscott  Chaucer,  and  wrote  in  it: 

I  have  seen  two  masters  at  work,  Morris  Who  made  this  book, 
The  other  Rodin  the  Great,  who  fashioned  my  head  in 
clay: 
I  give  the  book  to  Rodin,  scrawling  my  name  in  a  nook 
Of  the  shrine  their  works  shall  hallow  when  mine  are  dust 
by  the  way. 

Now  I  confess  I  am  not  convinced  by  this 
evidence  of  modesty  as  I  am  not  sure  that  it  is 
not  rather  the  final  artistic  touch  to  Shaw's 
swank.  For  what  was  the  origin  of  the  Rodin 
bust?  Rodin  knew  nothing  about  Shaw,  and  at 
first  refused  to  undertake  the  commission.  Mrs. 
Shaw  thereupon  wrote  to  Rodin  pleading  that 
she  wished  to  have  a  memorial  of  her  husband, 
and  that  her  husband  declared  that  any  man 
who,  being  a  contemporary  of  Rodin,  would 
have  his  bust  made  by  anyone  else,  would  pillory 
himself  to  all  posterity  ^s  an  ignoramus.    Rodin, 

324 


finding  that  he  had  to  deal  with  a  man  who 
knew  his  value,  weakened  in  his  refusal.  Mrs. 
Shaw  then  ascertained  from  Rilke,  the  Austrian 
poet,  who  was  then  acting  as  Rodin's  secretary, 
what  his  usual  fee  was  for  a  bust.  The  money 
(only  $5,000)  was  immediately  lodged  to 
Rodin's  credit  on  the  understanding  that  he  was 
to  be  under  no  obligation  whatever  in  respect 
of  it,  and  might  make  the  bust  or  not  make  it, 
begin  it  and  leave  it  off  if  it  did  not  interest  him : 
in  short,  treat  the  payment  as  a  contribution  to 
the  endowment  of  his  work  in  general  and  re- 
main completely  master  of  the  situation.  The 
result,  of  course,  was  that  Rodin  sent  for  Shaw 
to  come  to  Paris  at  once;  installed  him  and  his 
wife  as  daily  guests  at  his  Meudon  villa ;  worked 
steadily  at  the  bust  every  day  for  a  month  until 
it  was  finished ;  and  went  beyond  his  bargain  in 
giving  his  sitter  casts  of  it.  Here  we  have  the 
dexterous  Shaw,  the  master  of  blarney,  and  the 
penetrating  art  critic;  and  not  for  a  moment  do 
I  suggest  that  there  was  the  slightest  insincerity 
in  his  proceedings:  had  there  been,  Rodin  would 
not  have  been  taken  in.  But  was  there  no  vanity 
in  it?  Would  so  busy  a  man  as  Shaw  have  left 
his  work  and  gone  to  Paris  to  pose  like  a  profes- 
sional model  for  a  whole  month  if  he  had  not 
thought  his  bust  as  important  as  the  busts  of 
Plato  which  are  now  treasures  of  the  museums 
which  possess  them? 

325 


It  will  be  noted  that  I  have  spoken  of  Shaw 
playacting,  playing  the  part,  and  so  forth.  I 
have  done  so  advisedly.  Shaw  is  an  incorrigible 
and  continuous  actor,  using  his  skill  as  deliber- 
ately in  his  social  life  as  in  his  professional  work 
in  the  production  of  his  own  plays.  He  does 
not  deny  this.  "G.  B.  S.,"  he  says,  "is  not  a  real 
person :  he  is  a  legend  created  by  myself,  a  pose, 
a  reputation.  The  real  Shaw  is  not  a  bit  like 
him."  Now  this  is  exactly  what  all  his  acquaint- 
ances say  of  the  Rodin  bust,  that  is  is  not  a  bit 
like  him.  But  Shaw  maintains  that  it  is  the  only 
portrait  that  tells  the  truth  about  him.  When 
Rodin  was  beginning  the  work  in  his  studio  Mrs. 
Shaw  complained  to  him  that  all  the  artists  and 
caricaturists,  and  even  the  photographs.,  aimed 
at  producing  the  sort  of  suburban  Mephistophe- 
les  they  imagined  Shaw  to  be,  without  ever  tak- 
ing the  trouble  to  look  at  him.  Rodin  replied, 
"I  know  nothing  about  Mr.  Shaw's  reputation; 
but  I  will  give  you  what  is  there."  Shaw  de- 
clares he  was  as  good  as  his  word.  When 
Troubetskoi  saw  the  Rodin  bust  he  declared  that 
there  was  no  life  in  the  eyes;  and  in  three  hours 
frenzied  work  he  produced  his  bust  of  Shaw. 
As  a  tour  de  force  it  is  magnificent;  but  it  is 
Mephistopheles,  not  suburban,  but  aristocratic. 
"Very  gratifying  to  my  snobbish  family,"  said 
Shaw;  "but  not  my  pose."  He  liked  the  bust 
and  liked  Troubetskoi;  but  his  wife  would  have 

326 


none  of  it,  nor  of  the  curious  portrait  by  Neville 
Lytton,  which  originated  in  an  allegation  by 
Granville  Barker  that  Velasquez'  portrait  of 
Pope  Innocent  was  an  excellent  portrait  of  Shaw. 
Lytton  accordingly  painted  Shaw  in  the  costume 
and  attitude  of  Innocent;  and  though  the  picture 
is  a  convincing  revelation  of  what  Shaw  would 
be  like  in  the  papal  chair,  Pope  Bernard  will 
never  be  identified  by  any  antiquary  with  the 
subject  of  the  Rodin  bust.  Augustus  John's 
portraits  of  Shaw  are  even  less  reconcilable  with 
the  Rodin.  John  has  projected  all  Shaw's  public 
strength  and  assurance  at  their  fullest  intensity, 
indeed  at  more  than  lifesize.  "There  is  the 
great  Shaw,"  says  the  sitter,  when  he  shows  his 
friends  the  picture.  But  when  he  points  to  the 
Rodin,  he  says,  "Just  as  I  am,  without  one  plea." 
De  Smet's  portrait  is  that  of  a  quiet  delicate 
elderly  gentleman :  Shaw  likes  it.  Lady  Scott's 
statuette  is  friendly  and  literal.  (And  now 
please  note  that  this  busy  modest  Shaw,  who 
never  has  time  enough  or  vanity  enough  to  ac- 
cept the  invitations  to  sit  for  his  portrait  which 
are  showered  on  him,  has  nevertheless  contrived 
to  provide  memorials  of  himself  by  the  greatest 
masters  of  his  time.  Can  true  modesty  be  so 
colossal,  and  so  difficult  to  distinguish  from  a 
conceit  that  no  man  should  allow  himself  until 
he  has  been  dead  for  at  least  five  hundred  years? 
Shaw  is  the  greatest  pedant  alive,  Dickens' 
327 


man  who  ate  crumpets  on  principle  could  not 
hold  a  candle  to  him  in  this  respect.  Descrip- 
tive reporters  have  said  that  Shaw  wears  a  flannel 
shirt.  He  never  wore  a  flannel  shirt  in  his  life. 
He  does  not  wear  a  shirt  at  all,  because  it  is 
wrong  to  swaddle  one's  middle  with  a  double 
thickness  of  material :  therefore  he  wears  some 
head-to-foot  undergarment  unknown  to  shirt- 
makers.  The  flannel  fable  arose  because,  at  a 
time  when  it  was  socially  impossible  for  a  pro- 
fessional man  to  appear  in  public  in  London 
without  a  white  starched  collar,  he  maintained 
that  no  educated  eye  could  endure  the  color  con- 
trast of  ironed  starch  against  European  flesh 
tones,  and  that  only  a  very  black  and  brilliant 
negro  should  wear  such  a  collar.  He  therefore 
obtained  and  wore  gray  collars.  Now  that  the 
fashion  is  changed,  he  wears  collars  of  various 
colors ;  but  the  dye  is  always  chosen  to  carry  out 
a  theory  that  the  best  color  effect  is  that  of  two 
shades  of  the  same  color.  His  coat  is  of  the 
smartest  West  End  tailoring;  but  it  is  unlined, 
on  principle.  He  addresses  a  letter  high  up  in 
the  left  hand  corner  of  an  envelope.  A  mere 
affectation  of  singularity  you  say.  Not  at  all: 
he  will  talk  to  you  for  an  hour  on  the  beauty  of 
the  system  of  page  margins  established  by  the 
medieval  scribes  and  adopted  by  William  Mor- 
ris, and  on  its  practicality  as  leaving  room  for 
the  postman's  thumb,  and  considering  his  con- 

328 


veniencc  in  reading  the  address.    He  justifies  his 
refusal  to  use  apostrophes  and  inverted  commas 
in  printing  his  books  on  the  ground  that  they 
spoil  the  appearance  of  the  page,  declaring  that 
the  Bible  would  never  have  attained  its  supreme 
position  in  literature  if  it  had  been  disfigured 
with  such  unsightly  signs.     He  is  interested  in 
phonetics  and  systems  of  shorthand;  and  it  is  to 
his  pedantic  articulation  that  he  owes  his  popu- 
larity as  a  public  speaker  in  the  largest  halls,  as 
every  word  is  heard  with  exasperating  distinct- 
ness.   He  advocates  a  combination  of  the  metric 
system  with  the  duodecimal  by  inserting  two  new 
digits  into  our  numeration,  thus :  eight,  nine,  tee, 
ee,  ten,  and  eighteen,  nineteen,  eeteen  teeteen, 
twenty  and  so  forth.     He  likes  machines  as  a 
child  likes  toys,  and  once  very  nearly  bought  a 
cash  register  without  having  the  slightest  use  for 
it.    When  he  was  on  the  verge  of  sixty  he  yielded 
to  the  fascination  of  a  motor  bicycle,  and  rode  it 
away  from  the  factory  for  seventy-seven  miles, 
at  the  end  of  which,  just  outside  his  own  door, 
he  took  a  corner  too  fast  and  was  left  sprawling. 
He  has  been  accused  of  being  one  of  the  band  of 
devoted  lunatics  who  bathe  in  the  Serpentine 
(the  ornamental  water  in  Hyde  Park,  London), 
every  morning   throughout  the  year,    rain   or 
shine;  but  this  is  an  invention.    He  does,  how- 
ever, when  in  London,  swim  in  the  bathing  pool 
of  the  Royal  Automobile  Club  every  morning 

329 


before  breakfast,  winter  and  summer,  his  alleged 
reason  being  that  as  an  Irishman  he  dislikes 
washing  himself,  but  cannot  do  without  the 
stimulus  of  a  plunge  into  cold  water.  He  is,  as 
all  the  world  knows,  a  vegetarian ;  but  he  derides 
the  hygienic  pretensions  of  that  diet.  He  values 
health  very  highly,  like  all  faddists;  but  he  de- 
clares that  all  men  who  are  any  good,  will  trade 
on  their  stock  of  health  to  the  very  utmost  limit, 
and  therefore  live  on  the  verge  of  a  breakdown. 
Every  really  busy  man,  he  declares,  should  go 
to  bed  for  eighteen  months  when  he  is  forty,  to 
recuperate.  I  could  easily  fill  another  page  with 
his  notions;  but  I  forbear.  To  the  looker  on, 
each  one  of  them  is  half  an  amusement  and  half 
an  irritation. 

Shaw's  gallantries  are  for  the  most  past  non- 
existent. He  says,  with  some  truth,  that  no  man 
who  has  any  real  work  in  the  world  has  time  or 
money  for  a  pursuit  so  long  and  expensive  as  the 
pursuit  of  women.  He  may  possibly  have 
started  that  protest  against  the  expensiveness  and 
the  exactions  of  beautiful  women  which  is  the 
main  theme  of  his  friend,  Granville  Barker's 
"Waste"  and  the  "Madras  House."  Nobody 
knows  his  history  in  this  respect,  as  he  is  far  too 
correct  a  person  to  kiss  and  tell.  To  all  appear- 
ance he  is  a  model  husband;  and  in  the 
various  political  movements  in  which  his 
youth  was  passed  there  was  no  scandal  about 

330 


him.  Yet  a  popular  anecdote  describes  a  well 
known  actor-manager  as  saying  one  day  at 
rehearsal  to  an  actress  of  distinguished  beauty, 
"Let  us  give  Shaw  a  beefsteak  and  put  some 
red  blood  into  him."  "For  heaven's  sake, 
don't,"  she  exclaimed:  "he  is  bad  enough  as  it 
is;  but  if  you  give  him  meat  no  woman  in 
London  will  be  safe."  The  gentleman's  joke 
obviously  provoked  the  lady's;  and  no  man 
can  say  more  than  that  the  truth  must  be 
somewhere  between  them.  Anyhow,  Shaw's 
teaching  is  much  more  interesting  than  his  per- 
sonal adventures,  if  he  ever  had  any.  That 
teaching  is  unquestionably  in  very  strong  reac- 
tion against  what  he  has  called  Nineteenth 
Century  Amorism.  He  is  not  one  of  your  subur- 
ban Love-is-Enough  fanatics.  He  maintains 
that  chastity  is  so  powerful  an  instinct  that  its 
denial  and  starvation  on  the  scale  on  which  the 
opposite  impulse  has  been  starved  and  denied 
would  wreck  any  civilization.  He  insists  that 
intellect  is  a  passion;  and  that  the  modern  notion 
that  passion  means  only  sex  is  as  crude  and  bar- 
barous as  the  ploughman's  idea  that  art  is  simply 
bawdiness.  He  points  out  that  art  can  flourish 
splendidly  when  sex  is  absolutely  barred,  as  it 
was,  for  example,  in  the  Victorian  literature 
which  produced  Dickens,  and  that  painting  in 
Italy  and  sculpture  in  Greece  were  nursed  to 
their  highest  point  within  the  limits  of  a  religion 

331 


and  a  convention  which  absolutely  barred  por- 
nography. He  compares  Giulio  Romano,  a 
frank  and  shameless  pornographer,  a  pupil  of 
Raphael's,  and  a  more  brilliant  draughtsman, 
with  Raphael  himself,  who  was  so  sensitive  that 
though  he  never  painted  a  draped  figure  with- 
out first  drawing  it  in  the  nude,  he  always  paid 
the  Blessed  Virgin  the  quaint  tribute  of  a  calecon 
in  his  studies  of  her,  and  contrived  to  decorate 
the  villa  of  a  voluptuary  with  the  story  of  Cupid 
and  Psyche  without  either  shrinking  from  the 
uttermost  frankness  or  losing  his  dignity  and 
essential  innocence.  Shaw  contends  that  when 
art  passed  from  the  hands  of  Raphael  to  those 
of  Giulio  it  fell  into  an  abyss,  and  became  not 
only  disgusting  but  dull.  For  the  modern 
drama,  with  its  eternal  triangle  and  so  forth,  he 
claims  nothing  but  that  it  proves  adultery  to  be 
the  dullest  of  subjects,  and  the  last  refuge  of  a 
bankrupt  imagination.  He  wrote  "Plays  for 
Puritans"  to  show  how  independent  he  was  of 
such  expedients.  In  "Fanny's  First  Play"  he 
ridicules  the  critics  who  conclude  that  he  has  no 
virility.  He  demands  scornfully  whether  gen- 
uine virility  can  be  satisfied  with  stories  and  pic- 
tures, and  declares  that  the  fleshy  school  in  art  is 
the  consolation  of  the  impotent.  Yet  there  are 
several  passages  in  his  writings  and  dramas 
which  show  that  he  considers  that  imaginary 
love  plays  an  important  part  in  civilized  life. 

332 


In  his  latest  finished  play  the  handsome  hero  says 
to  a  man  who  is  jealous  of  him,  "Do  not  waste 
your  jealousy  on  me:  the  imaginary  rival  is  the 
dangerous  one."  In  "Getting  Married,"  the  lady 
who  refuses  to  marry  because  she  cannot  endure 
masculine  untidiness  and  the  smell  of  tobacco, 
hints  that  her  imagination  provides  her  with  a 
series  of  adventures  which  beggar  reality.  Shaw 
says  that  the  thousand  and  three  conquests  of 
Don  Juan  consist  of  three  squalid  intrigues  and 
a  thousand  imaginative  fictions.  He  says  that 
every  attempt  to  realize  such  fictions  is  a  failure; 
and  it  may  be  added  that  nobody  but  a  man  who 
had  tried  could  have  written  the  third  act  of 
Man  and  Superman.  In  the  fourth  act  of  that 
play,  too,  the  scene  in  which  the  hero  revolts 
from  marriage  and  struggles  against  it  without 
any  hope  of  escape  is  a  poignantly  sincere  utter- 
ance which  must  have  come  from  personal  ex- 
perience. Shakespeare  in  treating  the  same 
theme  through  the  character  of  Benedick  might 
conceivably  have  been  making  fun  of  somebody 
else;  but  Tanner  with  all  his  extravagance  is 
first  hand :  Shaw  would  probably  not  deny  it  and 
would  not  be  believed  if  he  did. 

Shaw's  amazing  anti-Shakespearc  campaign 
under  my  editorship  was  all  the  more  unexpected 
because  I  was  one  of  the  few  London  editors  to 
whom  Shakespeare  is  more  than  a  name.  I  was 
saturated  with  Shakespeare.    At  the  hottest  crisis 

333 


of  the  war,  if  I  bought  a  newspaper  to  learn  the 
latest  news  from  the  front,  and  my  eye  caught 
the  name  of  Hamlet  or  Falstaff,  I  would  read 
every  word  about  them  before  turning  to  the 
latest  telegrams.  That  I  should  be  the  editor  of 
an  attack  on  Shakespeare  of  unheard  of  ferocity 
was  the  one  thing  I  should  have  declared  confi- 
dently could  never  possibly  occur  to  me.  No 
name  was  more  sacred  to  me.  What  made  the 
adventure  odder  was,  first,  that  Shaw,  who  de- 
livered the  attack,  was  as  full  of  Shakespeare  as 
I,  and,  second,  that  though  we  were  both  scan- 
dalized by  the  sacrilege  we  were  committing, 
neither  of  us  could  honestly  alter  a  word  in  one 
of  the  articles.  They  were  outrageous ;  but  there 
was  nothing  to  withdraw,  nothing  to  soften,  noth- 
ing that  could  be  modified  without  bringing 
down  the  whole  critical  edifice.  The  explana- 
tion is  simple  enough.  Shaw's  first  shot  at 
Shakespeare  was  fired  in  1894.  Ibsen's  first 
broadside  on  England  caught  London  between 
wind  and  water  in  1889.  Shaw  had  written  his 
"Quintessence  of  Ibsenism"  in  the  meantime,  and 
was  judging  everything  on  and  off  the  stage  by 
the  standard  set  up  by  the  terrible  Norwegian. 
Many  lesser  men  suffered  cruelly  by  that  stand- 
ard; but  Shakespeare  was  the  most  conspicuous 
victim.  "It  is  useless  to  talk  of  Shakespeare's 
depth  now,"  said  Shaw:  "there  is  nothing  left 
but  his  music.    Even  the  famous  delineation  of 

334 


character,  the  Moliere  -  Shakespeare  -  Scott  - 
Dumas  pere  novel,  is  only  a  trick  of  mimicry. 
Our  Bard  is  knocked  out  of  time:  there  is  not  a 
feature  left  on  his  face.  Hamlet  is  a  spineless 
effigy  beside  Pier  Gynt,  Imogen  a  doll  beside 
Nora  Helmer,  Othello  a  convention  of  Italian 
opera  beside  Julian."  And  it  was  quite  true. 
Only  in  the  Sonnets  could  we  find  Shakespeare 
getting  to  that  dark  centre  of  realization  at  which 
Ibsen  worked.  Now  Shaw  was  not  only  full  of 
Ibsen,  but  full  of  Wagner,  of  Beethoven,  of 
Goethe,  and — curiously — of  Bunyan.  The  Eng- 
lish way  of  being  great  by  flashes :  Shakespeare's 
way,  Ruskin's  way,  and  Chesterton's  way,  with- 
out ever  following  the  inspiration  up — that  enor- 
mous disregard  of  intellectual  thoroughness  that 
William  Morris  put  his  finger  on  when  he  said 
that  Ruskin  could  say  the  most  splendid  things 
and  forget  them  five  minutes  after,  could  not  dis- 
guise its  incoherence  from  an  Irishman.  Shaw's 
favorite  saying  that  an  Irishman  may  like  an 
Englishman  better  than  he  likes  any  Irishman, 
and  may  prefer  an  English  cottage  to  an  Irish 
palace,  but  that  no  Irishman  can  regard  the  Eng- 
lish as  an  adult  race,  explains  a  good  deal  in  his 
attitude  to  Shakespeare.  "The  Irish,"  he  says, 
"with  all  their  detestable  characteristics  are  at 
least  grown  up.  They  think  systematically :  they 
don't  stop  in  the  middle  of  a  game  of  golf  to 
take  in  the  grandeur  of  thought  as  if  it  were  a 

335 


sunset,  and  then  turn  back  to  their  game  as  the 
really  serious  business  of  their  life." 

It  will  be  noticed  that  my  portrait  of  Shaw  is 
both  more  and  less  intimate  than  any  other  I 
have  penned.  More,  because  Shaw  tells  the 
whole  world  all  that  there  is  to  be  told  about 
himself.  Less,  because  I  never  sat  on  a  com- 
mittee with  him;  and  that  is  the  only  way  to 
see  much  of  him.  Shaw  is  not  really  a  social 
man.  He  never  goes  anywhere  unless  he  has 
business  there.  He  pays  no  calls.  Once  he  was 
induced  by  Maurice  Baring  to  go  to  a  bachelors' 
party  of  the  usual  British  type,  where  men  of  all 
generations,  from  Lord  Cromer  to  H.  G.  Wells, 
were  trying  to  remember  how  to  behave  like 
undergraduates.  "Gentlemen,"  said  Shaw,  with 
deadly  contempt  for  their  efforts,  "we  shall  en- 
joy ourselves  very  much  if  only  you  will  not 
try  to  be  convivial." 

He  has  described  me  as  a  Monster;  and  his 
ground  is  that  "Frank  Harris  adores  literature 
with  a  large  L  and  yet  can  write :  that  is,  he  com- 
bines the  weakness  of  the  amateur  with  the 
strength  of  a  genuine  vocation."  It  is  quite  true 
that  I  am  a  born  Mermaid  Tavcrncr:  I  share 
with  Shakespeare  and  Doctor  Johnson  that 
weakness  of  the  amateur  which  delights  in  the 
feast  of  reason  and  the  flow  of  soul  among  my 
literary  compeers,  and  my  betters  if  I  can  tempt 
them  to  sit  with  me.   Bjut  Shaw  declares  that  he 

330 


saved  his  soul  when  he  came  to  London  by  re- 
solving, after  his  first  glance  at  the  Savile  Club, 
that  he  would  never  be  a  literary  man  or  consort 
with  such."  "I  might  have  spent  my  life  sitting 
watching  these  fellows  taking  in  each  other's 
washing  and  learning  no  more  of  the  world  than 
a  tic  in  a  typewriter  if  I  had  been  fool  enough," 
he  says.  I  tried  to  cure  him  of  this  by  inviting 
him  to  my  Saturday  Review  lunches  at  the  Cafe 
Royal ;  but  it  was  no  use.  He  came  a  few  times, 
being  sincerely  interested  in  the  Cafe,  in  the 
waiters,  in  the  prices,  in  the  cookery:  in  short,  in 
the  economics  of  the  place;  and  he  concluded 
that  Harold  Frederic  and  I  ate  too  much  meat, 
and  that  it  was  a  waste  of  money  to  pay  Cafe 
Royal  prices  for  his  own  plateful  of  maccaroni, 
which  he  could  obtain  elsewhere  for  tenpence. 
The  fact  that  I  paid  for  it  made  no  difference 
whatever  to  him :  he  objected  to  a  waste  of  my 
money  just  as  much  as  of  his  own. 

I  have  sometimes  wished  that  a  good  many 
other  people  were  equally  considerate;  but 
Shaw's  consideration  amounts  to  an  interference 
with  one's  private  affairs  that  is  all  the  more  in- 
furiating because  its  benevolence  and  sagacity 
makes  it  impossible  to  resent  it.  One  of  his 
hostesses  said  he  was  a  most  dangerous  man,  and, 
on  being  asked  how  and  why  (in  the  hope  of 
eliciting  some  scandal)  explained,  "You  invite 
him  down  to  your  place  because  you  think  he 
will  entertain  your  guests  with  his  brilliant  con- 

337 


vcrsation;  and  before  you  know  where  you  are 
he  has  chosen  a  school  for  your  son,  made  your 
will  for  you,  regulated  your  diet,  and  assumed 
all  the  privileges  of  your  family  solicitor,  your 
housekeeper,  your  clergyman,  your  doctor,  your 
dressmaker,  your  hairdresser,  and  your  estate 
agent.  When  he  has  finished  with  everybody 
else,  he  incites  the  children  to  rebellion.  And 
when  he  can  find  nothing  more  to  do,  he  goes 
away  and  forgets  all  about  you". 

All  attempts  to  draw  him  into  disinterested 
social  intercourse  are  futile.  If  I  had  wanted 
to  see  as  much  of  Shaw  as  I  could  easily  see  of 
any  other  man  of  letters  in  London,  I  should 
have  to  join  his  endless  committee,  when  I  could 
have  seen  him  five  times  a  week  at  least.  Our 
relations  as  contributor  and  editor  were  useless 
for  social  purposes:  he  did  not  come  to  the  office 
as  often  as  once  a  year,  and  then  only  when  we 
were  in  some  legal  difficulty,  when  he  would 
hasten  to  our  aid  and  demonstrate  with  admir- 
able lucidity  that  we  had  not  a  leg  to  stand  on. 
He  is  accessible  to  everybody,  and  tells  every- 
body everything  without  reserve;  but  the  net 
result  is  that  nobody  really  knows  him  or  can 
tell  you  anything  about  him. 

There  is  a  cutting  edge  to  Shaw  that  every- 
body dreads.  He  has  in  an  extreme  degree  the 
mercurial  mind  that  recognizes  the  inevitable 
instantly  and  faces  it  and  adapts  itself  to  it  ac- 

338 


cordingly.    Now  there  is  hardly  anything  in  the 
world  so  unbearable  as  a  man  who  will  not  cry 
at  least  a  little  over  spilt  milk,  or  allow  us  a 
few  moments  murmuring  before  we  admit  that 
it  is  spilt  and  done  for.    Few  of  us  realize  how 
much  we  soften  our  losses  by  wrapping  the  hard 
things  of  life  in  a  veiling  atmosphere  of  sym- 
pathies, regret,  condolences,  caressing  little  pre- 
tences that  are  none  the  less  sweet  because  they 
can  never  be  made  good :  in  short,  moral  shock 
absorbers.     Shaw  neither  gives  nor  takes  such 
quarter.    There  is  a  story  of  an  Indian  prince 
whose  favorite  wife,  when  banqueting  with  him, 
caught  fire  and  was  burnt  to  ashes  before  she 
could  be  extinguished.    The  Indian  prince  took 
in  the  situation  at  once,  and  faced  it     "Sweep 
up  your  missus,"  he  said  to  his  weeping  staff; 
"and  bring  in  the  roast  pheasant."    That  prince 
was  an  oriental  Shaw.     Once,  at  Westminster 
Bridge  underground  station,  Shaw  slipped  at  the 
top  of  the  stairs,  and  shot  down  the  whole  flight 
on  his  back,  to  the  horror  of  the  bystanders.    But 
when  he  rose  without  the  least  surprise  and 
walked  on  as  if  that  were  his  usual  way  of  nego- 
tiating a  flight  of  steps,  they  burst  into  an  irre- 
sistible shriek  of  laughter.     Whether   it  is   a 
missed  train,  or  a  death  among  his  nearest  and 
dearest,  he  shows  this  inhuman  self-possession. 
No  one  has  accused  him  of  being  a  bad  son :  his 
relations  with  his  mother  were  apparently  as 

339 


perfect  as  anything  of  the  kind  could  be;  but 
when  she  was  cremated,  Granville  Barker,  whom 
he  had  chosen  to  accompany  him  as  the  sole 
other  mourner,  could  say  nothing  to  him  but 
"Shaw:  you  certainly  are  a  merry  soul."  Shaw 
was  not  only  full  of  interest  in  the  process  and 
the  ceremony,  but  full  also  of  a  fancy  that  his 
mother  was  looking  on  at  it  over  his  shoulder 
and  sharing  his  delight  at  the  points  on  which  it 
appealed  to  his  sense  of  humor.  He  is  fond  of 
saying  that  what  bereaved  people  need  is  a  little 
comic  relief,  and  that  it  probably  explains  why 
funerals  are  so  farcical. 

In  many  ways  this  mercurial  gift  serves  Shaw's 
turn  very  well.  He  knows  much  sooner  and 
better  than  most  people  when  he  is  in  danger 
and  when  out  of  it;  and  this  gives  him  an  appear- 
ance of  courage  when  he  is  really  running  no 
risk.  He  has  the  same  advantage  in  his  sense  of 
the  value  of  money,  knowing  when  it  is  worth 
spending  and  when  it  is  worth  keeping;  and 
here  again  he  often  appears  generous  when  he  is 
driving  a  very  good  bargain.  Therefore  when 
he  describes  himself,  as  he  does,  as  timid  and 
stingy  whilst  the  man  in  the  street  is  amazed  at 
his  boldness  and  liberality,  it  is  very  hard  to 
decide  how  far  he  is  capable  of  facing  real 
danger  or  making  a  real  sacrifice.  He  is  genu- 
inely free  from  envy;  but  how  can  a  man  be 
envious  when  he  pities  every  other  man  for  not 

340 


being  George  Bernard  Shaw?  The  late  Cecil 
Chesterton  has  left  it  on  record  that  when  he, 
as  a  young  nobody,  met  the  already  famous 
Shaw,  he  was  received  on  terms  of  the  frankest 
boyish  equality.  This  shows  that  Shaw  makes 
no  mistakes  about  man  and  manners;  it  hardly 
proves  more.  All  that  can  be  predicted  of  him 
by  the  average  man  is  unexpectedness. 

Shaw,  therefore,  with  all  his  engaging  man- 
ners and  social  adroitness,  appears  as  one  who 
does  not  care  what  he  says,  who  is  callous  in 
some  of  the  most  moving  situations  in  life,  and 
whose  line  can  never  be  foreseen,  no  matter  what 
the  subject  is.  That  is  not  a  receipt  for  a  reas- 
suring or  popular  personality,  though  it  may  be 
for  a  provocative  one.  Granted  that  it  may  be 
a  quite  misleading  effect  produced  by  his  excel- 
lent quality  of  brain,  none  the  less  it  explains 
why  "he  has  not  an  enemy  in  the  world;  and 
none  of  his  friends  like  him."  The  most  famous 
single  passage  in  his  dramatic  work,  Caesar's 
"He  who  has  never  hoped  can  never  despair," 
is  praised  for  its  fineness,  its  originality.  But 
no  one  has  ever  felt  sure  that  his  inspiration  is 
not  infernal  rather  than  divine.  Compare  it  with 
the  now  intolerably  hackneyed  quotation  which 
endears  Shaw  to  the  Nonconformist  conscience: 
"This  is  the  true  joy  in  life,  the  being  used  for 
a  purpose  recognized  by  yourself  as  a  mighty 
one;  the  being  thoroughly  worn  out  before  you 

341 


are  thrown  on  the  scrap  heap ;  the  being  a  force 
of  Nature  instead  of  a  feverish  little  selfish  clod 
of  ailments  and  grievances  complaining  that  the 
world  will  not  devote  itself  to  make  you  happy." 
There  is  no  smell  of  brimestone  about  this;  but 
ask  any  of  Shaw's  friends  whether  it  did  not 
surprise  them  much  more  as  coming  from  him 
that  "He  who  has  never  hoped  can  never  de- 
spair," and  you  will  soon  learn  which  of  the  two 
utterances  is  considered  the  more  Shavian  by 
those  who  know  the  author. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  carry  the  portrait  any 
further.    Shaw  is  almost  a  hopeless  subject,  be- 
cause there  is  nothing  interesting  to  be  said  about 
him  that  he  has  not  already  said  about  himself. 
Germany,  France,  England  and  America  have 
each  produced  books  about  him.    Henderson  has 
read  Shaw  from  end  to  end,  interviewed  him, 
and  ascertained  all  the  facts;  whilst  Gilbert 
Chesterton  apparently  regards  Shaw  as  a  sort  of 
starry  influence  that  never  touched  the  earth  or 
dipped  a  pen  in  the  ink.     Julius  Bab  sees  in 
Shaw  the  Arch  Protestant,  at  home  in  the  coun- 
try of  Luther.  McCabe,  still  a  priest  to  the  back- 
bone in  spite  of  his  defiant  apostacy,  argues  as  a 
priest  does,  but  from  the  opposite  end.    Shaw  is 
not  a  materialist  atheist;  therefore  argues  Mc- 
Cabe, he  must  be  a  man  who  will  steal  spoons 
if  he  gets  the  chance.    Holbrook  Jackson's  little 
volume  is  still  one  of  the  best:  he  knew  Shaw 

342 


in  his  Fabian  entourage,  and  worked  with  him. 
Professor  O'Bolger  threatens  us  with  revelations 
as  to  the  private  life  of  the  Shaw  family,  and 
promises  to  show  that  the  young  gentleman  in 
"Misalliance"  who  explains  that  he  had  three 
fathers  in  a  perfectly  blameless  menage  a  quatre, 
is  Shaw  himself.  Shaw  prefers  Chesterton's 
book  because,  he  says,  "of  its  magnificent  inno- 
cence and  generosity  towards  me,  and  its  general 
wisdom  and  interest."  Cestre's  book  is  a  very 
competent  piece  of  French  criticism,  of  the  kind 
that  might  be  expected  in  a  country  where 
Shaw's  works  are  in  the  official  educational  lists 
of  books  to  be  studied  for  examinations  in  Eng- 
lish literature. 

But  I  know  better  than  to  attempt  to  pick  the 
bones  of  a  man  who  has  already  preyed  on  him- 
self so  thoroughly  that  there  is  nothing  left  worth 
the  lifting.  I  have,  however,  noticed  something 
that  has  escaped  not  only  his  biographers  but 
himself.  Neither  he  nor  they  have  ever  at- 
tempted to  explain  Wilde's  epigram.  Shaw  has 
been  enormously  abused,  almost  always  stupidly 
and  maliciously.  He  has  also  been  idealized  as 
a  prophet  and  adored  as  a  saint.  Between  those 
extremes  there  has  been  a  good  deal  of  excellent 
writing  about  him,  by  very  able  reviewers  like 
Gilbert  Murray  and  Desmond  McCarthy,  which 
show  a  high  appreciation  of  him,  and  an  anxious 
desire   not  to   be   classed  with   his   detractors. 

343 


Wilde  debarred  himself  carefully  from  all  sus- 
picion of  underrating  Shaw.  The  words  with 
which  I  began  this  essay  show  that  I  myself 
insist  on  vindicating  my  taste  and  judgment  in 
this  respect  before  letting  myself  go  about  him. 
But  why  this  anxiety.  Why  not  take  it  for 
granted  that  this  eminent  man,  who  said  with 
such  placid  confidence  to  William  Archer,  "I 
shall  be  a  panjandrum  of  literature  for  the  next 
three  hundred  years,"  is  entitled  to  his  place  in 
the  Pantheon  without  question.  Why  not  go 
even  further,  and  say,  "Others  abide  our  ques- 
tion: thou  art  free!"  I  can  only  answer  that 
though  in  his  amazing  complacency  he  certainly 
does  not  abide  our  question,  he  is  very  far  from 
being  free  of  it.  He  is  violently  resented  and 
detested  as  well  as  admired  and  liked.  Yet  he 
has  no  vices;  his  manners  are  not  repulsive;  a 
little  real  malice  would  positively  heighten  his 
geniality.  The  problem  is  to  find  a  perfectly 
consistent  character  (and  Shaw's  character  is 
almost  mechanically  consistent)  that  can  produce 
these  contrary  effects.  Nobody  has  yet  tried  to 
do  this:  his  defenders  have  ignored  the  dislike: 
his  assailants  have  denied  his  qualities  and  in- 
vented faults  which  do  not  exist.  I  have  made 
no  attempt  to  sit  in  judgment  or  to  play  the 
chivalrous  friend.  I  have  sketched  the  man's 
lines  as  they  appear;  and  though  the  resultant 
figure  is  free  from  deformity,  yet  there  is  some- 

344 


thing  in  it  that  human  nature  cannot  easily  bear. 
It  is  odd  that  I,  who  feel  myself  to  be  a  very 
human  person — all  too  human  perhaps,  as 
Nietzsche  has  it— should  have  been  called  a 
monster  by  the  only  man  of  my  time  who,  though 
humane  to  a  degree,  is  never  quite  human.  Is 
he  not  himself  a  monster;  a  priceless  monster 
certainly,  but  still  one  who  could  give  us  all  a 
shudder,  and  knew  it,  by  saying  "Imagine  a 
world  inhabited  exclusively  by  Bernard  Shawsl" 
It  was  only  a  trick,  of  course:  a  world  of  any- 
bodies in  particular  would  be  unbearable.  It 
was  perhaps  only  a  plagiarism  of  Napoleon's 
saying  that  when  he  died  the  world  would  utter 
a  great  "Ouf !"  of  relief.  But  there  was  some- 
thing in  it  for  all  that;  and  what  that  something 
was  I  have  perhaps  made  you  feel  if  I  could  not 
make  you  understand,  not  understanding  myself. 

THE  END 


345 


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